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Woman's Work in 
English Fiction 

From tHe Restoration to tHe 
Mid-Victorian Period 



By 
Clara H. Whitmore, A.M. 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 
New "YorK and London 

Gbe fmtcfterbocKer press 
1910 



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Copyright, igog 

by 

CLARA H. WHITMORE 



Cbe fmlcfcerboclter press, Hew IQorft 



CI.A253477 






PREFACE 

THE writings of many of the women consider- 
ed in this volume have sunk into an oblivion 
from which their intrinsic merit should have 
preserved them. This is partly due to the 
fact that nearly all the books on literature have 
been written from a man's stand-point. While 
in other arts the tastes of men and women vary 
little, the choice of novels is to a large degree 
determined by sex. Many men who acknow- 
ledge unhesitatingly that Jane Austen is superior 
as an artist to Smollett, will find more pleas- 
ure in the breezy adventures of Roderick Ran- 
dom than in the drawing-room atmosphere of 
Emma; while no woman can read a novel of 
Smollett's without loathing, although she must 
acknowledge that the Scottish writer is a man 
of genius. 

This book is written from a woman's view- 
point. Wherever my own judgment has been 
different from the generally accepted one, as in 
the estimate of some famous heroines, the point 
in question has been submitted to other women, 



IV 



Preface 



and not recorded unless it met with the approval 
of a large number of women of cultivated taste. 

This work was first undertaken at the sugges- 
tion of Dr. E. Charlton Black of Boston Univer- 
sity for a Master's thesis, and it was due to his 
appreciative words that it was enlarged into 
book form. I also wish to thank Professor 
Ker of London University, and Dr. Henry A. 
Beers and Dr. Wilbur L. Cross of Yale University 
for the help which I obtained from them while a 
student in their classes. It is with the deep- 
est sense of gratitude that I acknowledge the 
assistance given to me in this work by Mr. 
Charles Welsh, at whose suggestion the scope of 
the book was enlarged, and many parts strength- 
ened. I wish especially to thank him for 
calling my attention to The Cheap Repository 
of Hannah More, and to the literary value of 
Maria Edgeworth's stories for children. 

It is my only hope that this book may in a 
small measure fill a want which a school-girl 
recently expressed to me: "Our Club wanted to 
study about women, but we have searched the 
libraries and found nothing." 

C. H. W. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER I. 

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of New- 
castle (1624-1674) — Aphra Behn 
(1640-1689) — Mary Manley (1672- 
1724) 1 

CHAPTER II. 

Sarah Fielding (1710^1768) — Eliza 
Haywood (1693-1^56) — Charlotte 
Lennox (1720-1766) — Frances Sheri- 
dan (1724-1766) .... 24 

CHAPTER III. 
Frances Burney (1752-1840) . . 45 

CHAPTER IV. 
Hannah More (1745-1833) ... 62 

CHAPTER V. 

Charlotte Smith (1 749-1 806) — Eliza- 
beth Inchbald (1753-1821) . . 73 



vi Contents 



CHAPTER VI. 

Clara Reeve (1725-1803) — Ann Rad- 
cliffe (1764-1822) — Sophia Lee 
(1750-1824) — Harriet Lee (1766- 
1851) 88 

CHAPTER VII. 

Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849) — Lady 
Morgan (1783-1859) . . . .111 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Elizabeth Hamilton (1 758-1816) — 
Anna Porter (1780-1832) — Jane 
Porter (1776-1850) . . . 133 

CHAPTER IX. 

Amelia Opie (i 769-1853) — Mary Brun- 
ton (1778-1818) .... 149 

CHAPTER X. 
Jane Austen (1775-1817) . . . 157 

CHAPTER XI. 

Susan Edmonstone Ferrier (1782-1854) 
— Mary Russell Mitford (1787— 1855) 
— Anna Maria Hall (1800-1881) . 179 



Contents vii 

PAGE 

CHAPTER XII. 

Lady Caroline Lamb (1785-1828) — Mary 
Shelley (1 797-1851) . . . 200 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Catherine Grace Frances Gore (1799- 
1861) — Anna Eliza Bray (1790-1883) 216 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Julia Pardoe (1806-1862) — Frances 
Trollope (1780-1863) — Harriet Mar- 
tineau (1802-1876) .... 231 

CHAPTER XV. 

Emily Bronte (1818-1848) — Anne 
Bronte (18 2 0-18 4 9) — Charlotte 
Bronte (1816-1855) . . . 247 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1810- 
1865) 274 

Conclusion 293 

Index 297 



WOMAN'S WORK IN 
ENGLISH FICTION 



CHAPTER I 

The Duchess of Newcastle. Mrs. 
Behn. Mrs. Manley 

IN the many volumes containing the records 
of the past, the names of few women appear, 
and the number is still smaller of those who 
have won fame in art or literature. Sappho, 
however, has shown that poetic feeling and ex- 
pression are not denied the sex; Jeanne d'Arc 
was chosen to free France; Mrs. Somerville ex- 
celled in mathematics; Maria Mitchell ranked 
among the great astronomers; Rosa Bonheur 
had the stroke of a master. These women 
possessed genius, and one is tempted to ask 
why more women have not left enduring work, 
especially in the realm of art. The Madonna and 
Child, what a subject for a woman's brush! 
Yet the joy of maternity which shines in a 
l 



2 Woman's Work in Fiction 

mother's eyes has seldom been expressed by 
her in words or on canvas. It was left for a 
man, William Blake, to write some of our 
sweetest songs of childhood. 

But as soon as the novel appeared, a host 
of women writers sprang up. Women have 
always been story-tellers. Long before Homer 
sang of the fall of Troy, the Grecian matrons at 
their spinning related to their maids the story 
of Helen's infidelity; and, as they thought of 
their husbands and sons who had fallen for her 
sake, the story did not lack in fervour. But the 
minstrels have always had this advantage over 
the story-tellers: their words, sung to the lyre, 
were crystallised in rhythmic form, so that they 
resisted the action of time, while only the sub- 
stance of the stories, not the words which gave 
them beauty and power, could be retained, and 
consequently they crumbled away. When the 
novel took on literary form, women began to 
write. They were not imitators of men, but 
opened up new paths of fiction, in many of 
which they excelled. 

The first woman to essay prose fiction as 
an art was Margaret, Queen of Navarre. In 
the seventy-two tales of The Heptameron, a 
book written before the dawn of realism, she 
related many anecdotes of her brother, Francis 
the First, and his courtiers. Woman's per- 
manent influence over the novel began about 



The Duchess of Newcastle 3 

1640, and was due directly to the Hotel Ram- 
bouillet, in whose grand salon there mingled 
freely for half a century the noblest minds 
of France. This salon was presided over by 
the Marquise de Rambouillet, who had left 
the licentious court of Henry the Fourth, and 
had formed here in her home between the 
Louvre and the Tuileries a little academy, 
where Corneille read his tragedies before they 
were published, and Bousset preached his first 
sermon, while among the listeners were the 
beautiful Duchess de Longueville, Madame de 
Lafayette, Madame de Sevigne* and Mademoi- 
selle de Scuden, besides other persons of royal 
birth or of genius. The ladies of this salon be- 
came the censors of the manners, the literature, 
and even the language of France. Here was 
the first group of women writers whose fame ex- 
tended beyond their own country, and has lasted, 
though somewhat dimmed, to the present. 
Since the seventeenth century the influence of 
women novelists has been ever widening. 

In England, women entered the domain of 
literature later than in France, Spain, or Italy. 
Not until the Restoration did they take any 
active part in the world of letters ; and not until 
the reign of George the Third did they make any 
marked contribution to fiction. 

The first woman writer of prose fiction in 
England was the thrice noble and illustri- 



4 Woman's Work in Fiction 

ous Princess Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle. 
During the Commonwealth, the Duke and 
Duchess of Newcastle had lived in exile, but 
with the restoration of Charles the Second, in 
1660, they returned to London, where the 
Duchess soon became a notable personage. 
Crowds gathered in the park merely to see her 
pass, attracted partly by her fame as a writer, 
partly by the singularities she affected. Her 
black coach furnished with white curtains and 
adorned with silver trimmings instead of gilt, 
with the footmen dressed in long black coats, 
was readily distinguished from other carriages 
in the park. Her peculiarities of dress were no 
less marked. Her long black juste-au-corps, her 
hair hanging in curls about her bared neck, her 
much beplumed velvet cap of her own designing, 
were objects of ridicule to the court wits, who 
even asserted that she wore more than the usual 
number of black patches upon her comely face. 
More singular than her habiliments were her 
pretentions as a woman of letters, which caused 
the courtiers to laugh at her conceit. She was 
evidently aware of this failing as she writes in 
her Autobiography: ' ' I fear my ambition inclines 
to vain-glory, for I am very ambitious ; yet 't is 
neither for beauty, wit, titles, wealth, or power, 
but as they are steps to raise me to Fame's 
tower, which is to live by remembrance in 
after-ages." 



The Duchess of Newcastle 5 

But, notwithstanding her detractors, she re- 
ceived sufficient praise to foster her belief in 
her own genius. Her plays were well received. 
Her poems were declared by her admirers equal 
to Shakespeare's. Her philosophical works, 
which she dedicated to the great universities 
of Oxford and Cambridge, were accepted with 
fulsome flattery of their author. When she 
visited the Royal Society at Arundel House, the 
Lord President met her at the door, and, with 
mace carried before him, escorted her into the 
room, where many experiments were performed 
for her pleasure. In 1676, a folio volume was 
published, entitled Letters and Poems in Honour 
of the Incomparable Princess Margaret, Duchess 
of Newcastle, written by men of high rank and of 
learning, with the following dedication by the 
University of Cambridge: 

To Margaret the First : 

Princess of Philosophers: 

Who hath dispelled errors: 

Appeased the difference of opinions : 

And restored Peace 

To Learning's Commonwealth. 

Yet this praise was not all flattery, for the 
scholarly Evelyn always speaks of her with 
respect, and after visiting her writes, "I was 
much pleased with the extraordinary fanciful 
habit, garb, and discourse of the Duchess." 
Amid the arid wastes of her philosophical 



6 Woman's Work in Fiction 

works are green spots enlivened by good sense 
and humour that have a peculiar charm. At 
the time when the trained minds of the Royal 
Society were broadening scientific knowledge 
by careful experiments, this lady, with practi- 
cally no education, sat herself down to write 
her thoughts upon the great subjects of matter 
and motion, mind and body. She was em- 
boldened to publish her opinions, for, as she 
says: " Although it is probable, that some 
of the Opinions of Ancient Philosophers in 
Ancient times are erroneous, yet not all, neither 
are all Modern Opinions Truths, but truly I 
believe, there are more Errors in the One 
than Truth in the Other." Some of her ex- 
planations are very artless, as when she decides 
that passions are created in the heart and not 
in the head, because "Passion and Judgment 
seldom agree." 

Her philosophical works are often compounded 
of fiction and fact. Her book called The De- 
scription oj a New World called the Blazing World 
reminds one of some of the marvellous stories 
of Jules Verne. According to the story a 
merchant fell in love with a lady while she was 
gathering shells on the sea-coast, and carried 
her away in a light vessel. They were driven 
to the north pole, thence to the pole of another 
world which joined it. The conjunction of these 
two poles doubled the cold, so that it was in sup- 



The Duchess of Newcastle 7 

portable, and all died but the lady. Bear-men 
conducted her to a warmer clime, and presented 
her to the emperor of the Blazing World, whose 
palace was of gold, with floors of diamonds. 
The emperor married the lady, and, at her desire 
to study philosophy, sent for the Duchess 
of Newcastle, "a plain and rational writer," 
to be her teacher. The story at this point 
rambles into philosophy. 

Nature's Pictures drawn by Fancy's Pencil con- 
tains many suggestions for poems and novels. 
Particularly beautiful is the fragment of a story 
of a lord and lady who were forbidden to love 
in this world, but who died the same night, 
and met on the shores of the Styx. " Their 
souls did mingle and intermix as liquid essences, 
whereby their souls became as one." They 
preferred to enjoy themselves thus rather than 
go to Elysium, where they might be separated, 
and where the talk of the shades was always 
of the past, which to them was full of sorrow. 

The Duchess of Newcastle wrote a series of 
letters on beauty, eloquence, time, theology, 
servants, wit, and kindred subjects, often illus- 
trated by a little story, reminding the reader of 
some of the Spectator papers, which delighted the 
next generation. As in those papers, characters 
were introduced. Mrs. P.I., the Puritan dame, 
appears in several letters. She had received 
sanctification, and consequently considered all 



8 Woman's Work in Fiction 

vanities of dress, such as curls, bare necks, 
black patches, fans, ribbons, necklaces, and 
pendants, temptations of Satan and the signs 
of damnation. In a subsequent letter she 
becomes a preaching sister, and the Duchess 
has been to hear her, and thus comments upon 
the meeting: "There were a great many holy 
sisters and holy brethren met together, where 
many took their turns to preach; for as they are 
for liberty of conscience, so they are for liberty 
of preaching. But there were more sermons 
than learning, and more words than reason." 

This is the first example of the use of letters 
in English fiction. In the next century it was 
adopted by Richardson for his three great 
novels, Pamela, Clarissa Harlowe, and Sir 
Charles Grandison; it was used by Smollett in the 
novel of Humphry Clinker, and became a popular 
mode of composition with many lesser writers. 

But posterity is chiefly indebted to the Duchess 
of Newcastle for her life of her husband and 
the autobiography that accompanies it. Of the 
former Charles Lamb wrote that it was a jewel 
for which "no casket is rich enough." Of the 
beaux and belles who were drawn by the ready 
pens of the playwrights of the court of Charles 
the Second none are worthy of a place beside the 
Duke of Newcastle and his incomparable wife. 

With rare felicity she has described her home 
life in London with her brothers and sisters 



The Duchess of Newcastle 9 

before her marriage. Their chief amusements 
were a ride in their coaches about the streets of 
the city, a visit to Spring Gardens and Hyde 
Park ; and sometimes a sail in the barges on the 
river, where they had music and supper. She 
announces with dignity her first meeting with 
the Duke of Newcastle in Paris, where she was 
maid of honour to the Queen Mother of England : 
"He was pleased to take some particular notice of 
me, and express more than an ordinary affection 
for me ; insomuch that he resolved to choose me 
for his second wife." And in another place 
she writes: "I could not, nor had not the 
power to refuse him, by reason my affections were 
fixed on him, and he was the only person I 
ever was in love with. Neither was I ashamed 
to own it, but gloried therein." Here is the 
charm of brevity. Richardson would have 
blurred these clearly cut sentences by eight 
volumes. 

In the biography of her husband she relates 
faithfully his services to Charles the First at 
the head of an army which he himself had 
raised ; his final defeat near York by the Parlia- 
mentary forces; and his escape to the continent 
in 1644. Then followed his sixteen years of 
exile in Paris, Rotterdam, and Antwerp, where 
"he lived freely and nobly," entertaining many 
persons of quality, although he was often in 
extreme poverty, and could obtain credit merely 



io Woman's Work in Fiction 

by the love and respect which his presence 
inspired. What a sad picture is given of the 
return of the exiles to their estates, which had 
been laid waste in the Civil War and later con- 
fiscated by Cromwell! But how the greatness 
of the true gentleman shines through it all, 
who, as he viewed one of his parks, seven of 
which had been completely destroyed, simply 
said, "He had been in hopes it would not have 
been so much defaced as he found it." 

In the closing chapter the Duchess gives 
Discourses Gathered from the Mouth of my noble 
Lord and Husband. These show both sound 
sense and a broad view of affairs. She writes: 

"I have heard My Lord say, 
I 

"That those which command the Wealth of 
a Kingdom, command the hearts and hands 
of the People. 



XXXIII 
' ' That many Laws do rather entrap than help 
the subject." 

Clarendon, who thought but poorly of the 
Duke's abilities as a general, gives the same 
characterisation of him: a man of exact pro- 
portion, pleasant, witty, free but courtly in his 
manner, who loved all that were his friends, 
and hated none that were his enemies, and who 



The Duchess of Newcastle n 

had proved his loyalty to his king by the sacrifice 
of his property and at the risk of his life. 

Perhaps the Duchess of Newcastle has un- 
wittingly drawn a true representation of the 
great body of English cavaliers, and has partly 
removed the stain which the immoralities of the 
court afterward put upon the name. These 
biographies give a story of marital felicity with 
all the characteristics of the domestic novel. 

At this time the English novel was a crude, 
formless thing, without dignity in literature. 
The Duchess of Newcastle, who aspired to be 
ranked with Homer and Plato, would have 
spurned a place among writers of romance, al- 
though her genius was primarily that of the 
novelist. She constantly thought of plots, 
which she jotted down at random, her common 
method of composition. She has described 
characters, and has left many bright pictures of 
the manners and customs of her age. Her 
style of writing is better than that of many of 
her more scholarly contemporaries, who studied 
Latin models and strove to imitate them. She 
wrote as she thought and felt, so that her style 
is simple when not lost in the mazes of philoso- 
phical speculation. She had all the requisites 
necessary to write the great novel of the 
Restoration. 

But in the next century her voluminous 
writings were forgotten, and the casual visitor 



12 Woman's Work in Fiction 

to Westminster Abbey who paused before the 
imposing monument in the north transept read 
with amused indifference the quaint inscription 
which marks the tomb of the noble pair ; that she 
was the second wife of the Duke of Newcastle, 
that her name was Margaret Lucas; "a noble 
family, for all the brothers were valiant and 
all the sisters were virtuous." To Charles Lamb 
belongs the credit of discovering the worth of her 
writings. Delighting in oddities, but quick to 
discern truth from falsehood, he loved to pore 
over the old folios containing her works, and 
could not quite forgive his sister Mary for speak- 
ing disrespectfully of "the intellectuals of a dear 
favourite of mine of the last century but one — 
the thrice noble, chaste and virtuous, but again 
somewhat fantastical and original-brained, gen- 
erous Margaret Newcastle." 

Her desire for immortality is nearer its ful- 
filment to-day than at any previous time. A 
third edition of the Life of the Duke of New- 
castle was published in 1675, the vear a ^er her 
death. Nearly two hundred years later, in 1 87 2 , 
it was included in Russell Smith's "Library 
of Old Authors," and since then a modernised 
English edition and a French edition of this 
book have been published. No one can read 
this biography without feeling the charm of the 
quaint, childlike personality of the Duchess of 
Newcastle. 



Mrs. Behn 13 

While all London was talking of the "mad 
Duchess of Newcastle," another lady was living 
there no less eminent as a writer, but so dis- 
tinguished for her wit, freedom of temper, and 
brilliant conversation, that even the great 
Dry den sought her friendship, and Sothern, 
Rochester, and Wycherley were among her ad- 
mirers. She was named " Astrea," and hailed as 
the wonder and glory of her sex. But Aphra 
Behn's talents brought her a more substantial 
reward than fame. Her plays were presented 
to crowded houses; her novels were in every 
library, and she obtained a large income from 
her writings; she was the first English woman 
to earn a living by her pen. 

In her early youth, Mrs. Behn lived for a time 
at Surinam in Dutch Guiana, where her father 
was governor. On one of the plantations was 
a negro in whose fate she became deeply in- 
terested. She learned from his own lips about 
his life in Africa, and was herself an eye witness 
of the indignities and tortures he suffered in 
slavery. She was so deeply impressed by his 
horrible fate, that on her return to London 
she related his story to King Charles the Second 
and at his request elaborated it into the novel 
Oroonoko. 

According to the story, Oroonoko, an African 
warrior, was married to Imoinda, a beautiful 
maiden of his own people. His grandfather, a 



14 Woman's Work in Fiction 

powerful chieftain, also fell in love with the 
beautiful Imoinda and placed her in his harem. 
When he found that her love for Oroonoko still 
continued, he sold her secretly into slavery and 
her rightful husband could learn nothing of her 
whereabouts. Later Oroonoko and his men 
were invited by the captain of a Dutch trading 
ship to dine on board his vessel. They accepted 
the invitation, but, after dinner, the captain 
seized his guests, threw them into chains, and 
carried them to the West Indies, where he sold 
them as slaves. Here Oroonoko found his 
wife, whose loss he had deeply mourned, and 
they were reunited. Oroonoko, however, indig- 
nant at the treachery practised against himself 
and his men, incited the slaves to a revolt. 
They were overcome, and Oroonoko was tied 
to a whipping-post and severely punished. As 
he found that he could not escape, he resolved 
to die. But rather than leave Imoinda to the 
cruelty of her owners, he determined to slay 
first his wife, then his enemies, lastly himself. 
He told his plans to Imoinda, who willingly 
accompanied him into the forest, where he put 
her to death. When he saw his wife dead at his 
feet, his grief was so great that it deprived him 
of the strength to take vengeance on his enemies. 
He was again captured and led to a stake, 
where faggots were placed about him. The au- 
thor has described his death with a faithfulness 



Mrs. Behn 15 

to detail that carries with it the impress of 
truth: " 'My Friends, am I to die, or to be 
whipt?' And they cry'd, 'Whipt! no, you 
shall not escape so well.' And then he reply'd, 
smiling, 'A blessing on thee'; and assured them 
they need not tie him, for he would stand fix'd 
like a Rock, and endure Death so as should 
encourage them to die: 'But if you whip me' 
[said he], 'be sure you tie me fast.' " 

The popularity of the book was instantaneous. 
It passed through several editions. It was trans- 
lated into French and German, and adapted for 
the German stage, while Sothern put it on the 
stage in England. It created almost as great a 
sensation as did Uncle Tom's Cabin two hundred 
years later. Like Mrs. Stowe's novel it had a 
strong moral influence, as it was among the 
earliest efforts to call the attention of Europe 
to the evils of the African slave trade. More- 
over, this her first novel gave Mrs. Behn an 
acknowledged place as a writer. 

Oroonoko marks a distinct advance in English 
fiction. Nearly all novels before this had 
consisted of a series of stories held together by 
a loosely formed plot running through a number 
of volumes, sometimes only five, but occasion- 
ally, as in The Grand Cyrus, filling ten quartos. 
Their form was such that like the Thousand and 
One Nights they could be continued indefi- 
nitely. Most of these novels belonged either 



1 6 Woman's Work in Fiction 

to the pastoral romance or the historical allegory. 
In the former the ladies and gentlemen who in a 
desultory sort of way carried on the plot were 
disguised as shepherds and shepherdesses and 
lived in idyllic state in Arcadia. In the latter 
they masqueraded under the names of kings and 
queens of antiquity and entered with the flourish 
of trumpets and the sound of drums. 

Oroonoko was the first English novel with a 
well developed plot. It moves along rapidly, 
without digression, to its tragic conclusion. 
Not until Fielding wrote Joseph Andrews was 
the plot of any English novel so definitely 
wrought. The lesser writer had a slight ad- 
vantage over the greater. Mrs. Behn's novel 
is constructed upon dramatic lines, so that it 
holds the interest more closely to the main 
characters, and the end is awaited with intense 
expectation ; while Fielding chose the epic form, 
which is more discursive, and Joseph Andrews 
like all his novels is excessively tame, almost 
hackneyed in its conclusion. Mrs. Behn's black 
hero is the first distinctly drawn character in 
English fiction, the first one that has any 
marked personality. Sometimes the enthusiasm 
with which he is described brings a smile to the 
lips of the modern reader and reminds one of 
the heroic savages of James Fenimore Cooper 
and Helen Hunt Jackson. She writes of him: 
"He was pretty tall, but of a Shape the most 



Mrs. Behn 



i7 



exact that can be Fancy'd: The most famous 
Statuary could not form the Figure of a Man 
more admirably turned from Head to Foot. . . . 
There was no one Grace wanting, that bears the 
Standard of true Beauty." And thus she con- 
tinues the description in the superlative degree. 

But the story is for the most part realistic. 
Although the scenes in Africa show the influence 
of the French heroic novels, as if the author were 
afraid to leave her story in its simple truth but 
must adorn it with purple and ermine, as soon 
as it is transferred to Surinam, where Mrs. Behn 
had lived, it becomes real. It has local colouring, 
at that time an almost unknown attribute. It 
has the atmosphere of the tropics. The de- 
scriptions are vivid, and often photographic. 
Occasionally they are exaggerated, but few trav- 
ellers to a region of which their hearers know 
nothing have been able to resist the temptation 
to deviate from the exact truth. But the 
whole novel, even at this late day, leaves one 
with the impression that it is a true biography. 

In the history of the English novel, in which 
Pamela is given an important place as the 
morning star which heralded the great light of 
English realism about to burst upon the world, 
this well arranged, definite, picturesque story 
of Oroonoko, whose author was reposing quietly 
within the hallowed precincts of Westminster 
Abbey fifty years before Richardson introduced 



1 8 Woman's Work in Fiction 

Pamela to an admiring public, should not be 
forgotten. Before Pamela was published, the 
complete works of Mrs. Behn passed through 
eight editions. The plots of all her novels are 
well constructed, with little extraneous matter, 
but with the exception of Oroonoko the charac- 
ters are shadowy beings, many of whom meet 
with a violent death. The Nun or the Perjured 
Duty has only five characters, all of whom perish 
in the meshes of love. The Fair Jilt or the 
Amours of Prince Tarquin and Miranda, founded 
on incidents that came to the author's knowledge 
during her residence in Antwerp, is well fitted 
for the columns of a modern yellow journal; the 
beautiful heroine causes the death of everyone 
who stands in the way of her love or her am- 
bition, but she finally repents and lives happy 
ever after. Mrs. Behn's style is always careless, 
owing to her custom of writing while entertain- 
ing friends. 

A great change took place in the public taste 
during the next hundred years, so that Mrs. 
Behn's novels, plays, and poems fell into disre- 
pute. Sir Walter Scott tells the story of his 
grand-aunt who expressed a desire to see again 
Mrs. Behn's novels, which she had read with de- 
light in her youth. He sent them to her sealed 
and marked "private and confidential." The 
next time he saw her, she gave them back 
with the words: 



Mrs. Manley 19 

"Take back your bonny Mrs. Behn, and, if 
you will take my advice, put her in the fire, for 
I find it impossible to get through the very first 
novel. But is it not a very odd thing that I, 
an old woman of eighty and upward, sitting 
alone, feel myself ashamed to read a book which 
sixty years ago I have heard read aloud for the 
amusement of large circles, consisting of the 
first and most creditable society in London?" 

Mrs. Behn has been accused of great license in 
her conduct and of gross immorality in her 
writings. Her friend and biographer says of the 
former: "For my part I knew her intimately, 
and never saw ought unbecoming the just 
modesty of our sex, though more free and gay 
than the folly of the precise will allow." For 
the latter the fashion must be blamed more than 
she. Mrs. Behn was not actuated by the high 
moral principles of Mademoiselle de Scuderi 
and Madame de Lafayette, with whom love 
was an ennobling passion, nor was she writing 
for the refined men and women of the Hotel 
Rambouillet; she was striving to earn a living 
by pleasing the court of Charles the Second, 
and in that she was eminently successful. 

Nearly a quarter of a century after the death 
of Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley published anony- 
mously the first two volumes of the New Ata- 
lantis, the book by which she is chiefly known, 



20 Woman's Work in Fiction 

under the title of Secret Memoirs and Manners of 
Several Persons of Quality of both Sexes from the 
New Atalantis, an Island in the Mediterranean. 
Mrs. Manley was a Tory, and she peopled the 
New Atalantis with members of the Whig party 
under Marlborough as Prince Fortunatus. The 
book is written in the form of a conversation 
carried on by Astrea, Virtue, and Intelligence, a 
personification of the Court Gazette. They de- 
scribed the Whig leaders so accurately, and 
related the scandal of the court so faithfully, 
that, although fictitious names were used, no 
key was needed to recognise the personages in 
the story. 

The publisher and printer were arrested for 
libel, but Mrs. Manley came forward and owned 
the authorship. In her trial she was placed 
under a severe cross-examination by Lord Sun- 
derland, who attempted to learn where she 
had obtained her information. She persisted 
in her statement that no real characters were 
meant, that it was all a work of imagination, 
but if it bore any resemblance to truth it must 
have come to her by inspiration. Upon Lord 
Sunderland's objecting to this statement, on the 
grounds that so immoral a book bore no trace 
of divine impulse, she replied that there were 
evil angels as well as good, who might possess 
equal powers of inspiration. The book was 
published in May, 1709; in the following Febru- 



Mrs. Manley 21 

ary, she was discharged by order of the Queen's 
Bench. 

Soon after her discharge from court, she wrote 
a third and fourth volume of the New Atalantis 
under the title, Memoirs of Europe toward the 
Close of the Eighth Century written by Eginardns, 
Secretary and Favorite to Charlemagne ', and done 
into English, by the Translator of the New Atalan- 
tis. Here she has followed the French models. 
There is a loosely constructed plot, and the 
characters tell a series of stories. Many of the 
writers of Queen Anne's reign are described 
with none of that lustre that surrounds them 
now, but as they appeared to a cynical woman 
who knew them well. She refers to Steele as 
Don Phaebo, and ridicules his search for the 
philosopher's stone; and laments that Addison, 
whom she calls Maro, should prostitute his 
talents for gold, when he might become a second 
Vergil. 

Mrs. Manley had been well trained to write a 
book like the New Atalantis. At sixteen, an 
age when Addison and Steele were at the Char- 
terhouse preparing for Oxford, her father, Sir 
Roger Manley, died. A cousin, taking advan- 
tage of her helplessness, deceived her by a 
false marriage, and after three years abandoned 
her. Upon this she entered the household of the 
Duchess of Cleveland, the mistress of Charles 
the Second, who soon tired of her and dismissed 



22 Woman's Work in Fiction 

her from her service. She then began to write, 
and by her plays and political articles soon won 
an acknowledged place among the writers of 
Grub Street. 

From the many references to her in the letters 
and journals of the period, she seems to have 
been popular with the writers of both political 
parties. Swift writes to Stella that she is a 
very generous person "for one of that sort," 
which many little incidents prove. She dedi- 
cated her play Lucius to Steele, with whom she 
was on alternate terms of enmity and friendship, 
as a public retribution for her ridicule of him in 
the New Atalantis, saying that "scandal between 
Whig and Tory goes for not." Steele, equally 
generous, wrote a prologue for the play, perhaps 
in retribution for some of the harsh criticisms 
of her in the Taller. All readers of Pope remem- 
ber the reference to her in the Rape of the Lock, 
where Lord Petre exclaims that his honour, name 
and praise shall live 

As long as Atalantis shall be read. 

Although Mrs. Manley's pen was constantly 
and effectively employed in the interest of the 
Tory party, she being at one time the editor of 
the Examiner, the Tory organ, none of her writ- 
ings had the popularity of the New Atalantis. 
It went through seven editions and was trans- 
lated into the French. The book has no intrinsic 



Mrs. Manley 23 

merit; its language is scurrilous and obscene; 
but it appealed to the eager curiosity of the 
public concerning the private immoralities of 
men and women who were prominent at court. 
Human nature in its pages furnishes a con- 
temptible spectacle. 

The New Atalantis has now, however, as- 
sumed a permanent place in the history of fic- 
tion. This species of writing had been common, 
in France, but it was the first English novel 
in which political and personal scandal formed 
the groundwork of a romance. Swift followed 
its general plan in Gulliver's Travels, placing his 
political enemies in public office in Lilliput and 
Brobdingnag, only he so wrought upon them 
with his imagination that he gave to the world 
a finished work of art, while Mrs. Manley has 
left only the raw material with which the artist 
works. Smollett's political satire, Adventures of 
an Atom, was also suggested by the New Atalan- 
tis, but here the earlier writer has surpassed the 
later. All three of these writers took a low and 
cynical view of humanity. 

The women novelists who directly followed 
Mrs. Manley did not have her strength, but 
they had a delicacy that has given to their 
writings a subtle charm. From the time of 
Sarah Fielding to the present threatened reaction 
the writings of women have been marked by 
chastity of thought and purity of expression. 



CHAPTER II 

Sarah Fielding. Mrs. Lennox. 

Mrs. Haywood. Mrs. Sheridan 

ABOUT the middle of the eighteenth century, 
some interesting novels were written by 
women, but their fame was so overshadowed 
by the early masters of English fiction, who 
were then writing, that they have been almost 
forgotten. For in 1740 Pamela was published, 
the first novel of Samuel Richardson; in 1771, 
Humphry Clinker appeared, the last novel 
of Tobias Smollett; and during the thirty-one 
years between these two dates all the books 
of Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, and Smollett 
were given to the world, and determined the 
nature of the English novel. The plot of most 
of their fifteen realistic novels is practically the 
same. The hero falls in love with a beautiful 
young lady, not over seventeen, and there is a 
conflict between lust and chastity. The hero, 
balked of his prey, travels up and down the 
world, where he meets with a series of adven- 
tures, all very much alike, and all bearing very 
little on the main plot. At last fate leads the 
24 



Sarah Fielding 25 

dashing hero to the church door, where he con- 
fers a ring on the fair heroine, a paltry piece of 
gold, the only reward for her fidelity, with the 
hero thrown in, much the worse for wear, and 
the curtain falls with the sound of the wedding 
bells in the distance. 

The range of these novels is narrow. They 
describe a world in which the chief occupation 
is eating, drinking, swearing, gambling, and 
righting. Their chief artistic excellence is the 
strength and vigour with which these low scenes 
are described. Sidney Lanier says of them: 
"They play upon life as upon a violin without 
a bridge, in the deliberate endeavour to get the 
most depressing tones possible from the instru- 
ment." And Taine, who could hardly endure 
any of them, writes of Fielding what he implies 
of the others : ' ' One thing is wanted in your 
strongly-built folks — refinement; the delicate 
dreams, enthusiastic elevation, and trembling 
delicacy exist in nature equally with coarse 
vigour, noisy hilarity, and frank kindness." 

The women who essayed the art of fiction dur- 
ing these years did not have so firm a grasp of 
the pen as their male contemporaries, and they 
have added no portraits to the gallery of fiction ; 
but they saw and recorded many interest- 
ing scenes of British life which quite escaped 
the quick-sighted Fielding, or Sterne with the 
microscopic eyes. 



26 Woman's Work in Fiction 

In 1744, when Richardson had written only one 
book, and Fielding had published only two, before 
Tom Jones or Clarissa Harlowe had seen the light 
of day, Sarah Fielding published David Simple, 
under the title of The Adventures of David Simple, 
containing an account of his travels through the 
cities of London and Westminster in the search of 
a real friend, by a Lady. The author commenced 
the story as a satire on society. For a long time 
David's search is unsuccessful. Although he 
changed his lodgings every week, he could hear 
of no one who could be trusted. Many, to be sure, 
dropped hints of their own excellence, and the 
pity that they had to live with inferior neigh- 
bours. Among these was Mr. Spatter, who intro- 
duced him to Mr. Varnish. The former saw the 
faults of people through a magnifying glass; 
while the latter, when he mentioned a person's 
failings, added, "He was sure they had some 
good in them." " But David soon learned that 
Mr. Varnish was no readier to assist a friend in 
need than the fault-finding Mr. Spatter. 

Like her brother Henry, Sarah Fielding is 
often sarcastic. In one of the chapters she 
leaves David to his sufferings, "lest it should 
be thought," she added, "I am so ignorant 
of the world as not to know the proper time of 
forsaking people." But the pessimistic vein of 
the first volume changes to a more optimistic 
tone in the second. David, in his search for 



Sarah Fielding 27 

one friend, finds three. Fortunately these con- 
sist of a brother and sister and a lady in love 
with the brother. Even at this early time, an 
author had no doubts as to how a novel should 
end. The heading of the last chapter in the 
book informs us that it contains two wed- 
dings, "and consequently the Conclusion of the 
Book." 

In its construction, the plot is similar to that 
of the other novels of the period. David has 
plenty of time at his disposal, and listens with 
more patience than the reader to the detailed 
history of all the people he meets, and often 
begs a casual acquaintance to favour him with 
the story of his life. 

But Sarah Fielding's chief charm to her women 
readers is the feminine view of her times. In 
David Simple we have the pleasure of travel- 
ling through England, but with a woman as our 
guide. As Harry Fielding travelled between 
Bath and London, the fair reader wonders what 
he reported to Mrs. Fielding of what he had seen 
and heard. Surely at these various inns there 
must have been some by-play of real affection, 
some act of modest kindness, some incident of 
delicate humour. Did he regale Mrs. Fielding 
with the scenes he has described for his readers? 
Probably when she asked him if anything had 
happened en route, he merely yawned and replied, 
"Oh, nothing worth while." He had too much 



28 Woman's Work in Fiction 

reverence for his wife to repeat these low scenes 
to her, and we suspect he had eyes for no others. 
What would Addison or Steele have seen in the 
same place? 

Sarah Fielding also takes her characters on a 
stage-coach journey, but here we sit beside the 
fair heroine, an intelligent lady, and gaze at the 
men who sit opposite her. There is the Butter- 
fly with his hair pinned up in blue papers, wearing 
a laced waistcoat, and humming an Italian air. 
He admires nothing but the ladies, and offered 
some little familiarity to our heroine, which 
she repulsed; upon this he paid her the great- 
est respect imaginable, being convinced, as she 
would not suffer any intimacy from him, she 
must be one of the most virtuous women that 
had ever been born. There is the Atheist, who 
being alone with her for a few moments makes 
love to her in an insinuating manner, and tries 
to prove to her that pleasure is the only thing to 
be sought in life, and assures her that she may 
follow her inclinations without a crime, "while 
she knew that nothing could so much oppose her 
gratifying him, as her pleasing herself." Then 
there is the Clergyman who makes honourable 
love to her, but by doing so puts an end to the 
friendship which she had hoped might be be- 
tween them; until at the end of the journey, "she 
almost made a resolution never to speak to a 
man again, beginning to think it impossible for 



Sarah Fielding 29 

a man to be civil to a woman, unless he had 
some designs upon her." 

Whether or not women have ever portrayed the 
masculine sex truthfully is an open question. 
But a gentleman mellowed and softened in the 
light of ladies' smiles is quite a different creature 
from the same gentleman when seen among 
the sterner members of his own sex, and there 
are certain phases of men's characters portrayed 
in the novels of women which Fielding, Scott, 
and Thackeray seem never to have seen. 

Miss Fielding descants upon many familiar 
scenes in a manner that would have made her a 
valuable contributor to the Tatler or Spectator. 
All kinds of human nature interested her. There 
is the man who advises David as a friend to buy a 
certain stock which he himself is secretly trying 
to sell because he knows it has decreased in value, 
thus showing that money transactions in London 
in the reigns of the Georges differed little from 
money transactions on the Stock Exchange 
to-day. In some respects, however, society has 
improved since the days of Sarah Fielding. She 
describes the gentlemen of social prominence 
who tumble up to the carriages of ladies who 
are driving through Covent Garden in the 
morning, and present them with cabbages or 
other vegetables which they have picked up 
from the stalls, too intoxicated to know that 
their conduct is ridiculous. There are the 



30 Woman's Work in Fiction 

crowds at the theatres who show their displeas- 
ure with a playwright by making so much noise 
that his play cannot be heard on its first night 
and so is condemned. Other writers of the 
period complain of having received this kind of 
treatment at the hands of the gentlemen mob. 
And then we are introduced to a scene in the 
fashionable West End which is a familiar one 
to-day, where the ladies of quality have their 
whist assemblies and spend all the morning 
visiting each other and discussing how the 
cards were played the previous evening and 
why certain tricks were lost. 

We recognise the fact, however, that Miss 
Fielding's knowledge of life was but slight. 
She writes from the standpoint of a spectator, not 
like her brother as one who had been a part of it. 
She was one of that group of gentlewomen 
who gathered around Richardson and heard him 
read Clarissa, or discussed life and books with 
him at the breakfast table in the summer-house 
at North End, Hammersmith. Life was not 
lived there, but philosophy often sat at the 
board, and there was fine penetration into the 
characters and manners of men. Richardson 
transferred to Miss Fielding the compliment 
which Dr. Johnson had bestowed upon him, and 
it was not undeserved by the author of David 
Simple: 

"What a knowledge of the human heart! 



Mrs. Lennox 31 

Well might a critical judge of writing say, as he 
did to me, that your late brother's knowledge 
of it was not (fine writer as he was) comparable 
to yours. His was but as the knowledge of the 
outside of a clock-work machine, while yours 
was that of all the finer springs and movements 
of the inside." 

It is not difficult to conjure up a picture of the 
literary gentlemen and gentlewomen who used 
to breakfast with Richardson in the summer- 
house at North End; the gentlemen in their 
many-coloured velvet suits, the ladies wearing 
broad hoops, loose sacques, and Pamela hats. 
One of these ladies was Charlotte Ramsay, 
better known by her married name of Mrs. 
Lennox. Her father, Colonel James Ramsay, 
was lieutenant-governor of New York, where 
his daughter Charlotte was born in 1720. She 
was sent to England at the age of fifteen, and 
soon after her father died, leaving her unprovided 
for. She turned her attention to literature as a 
means of livelihood, and at once became a 
favourite in the literary circles of London, where 
she met and won the esteem of the great Dr. 
Johnson. 

When her first novel, The Life 0] Harriet 
Stuart, was published, he showed his apprecia- 
tion of its author in a unique manner. At his 
suggestion, the Ivy Lane Club and its friends 



32 Woman's Work in Fiction 

entertained Mrs. Lennox and her husband at 
the Devil's Tavern with a night of festivity. 
After an elaborate supper had been served, a 
hot apple-pie was brought in, stuffed full of 
bay-leaves, and Johnson with appropriate cer- 
emonies crowned the author with a wreath 
of laurel. The night was passed in mirth and 
conversation ; tea and coffee were often served ; 
and not until the creaking of the street doors 
reminded them that it was eight o'clock in the 
morning did the guests, twenty in number, leave 
the tavern. 

Mrs. Lennox's claim to a place in English 
literature rests solely upon her novel, The 
Female Quixote, published in 1752. Arabella, 
the heroine, is the daughter of a marquis who 
has retired into the country, where he lives 
remote from society. Her mother is dead ; her 
father is immersed in his books, so that Arabella 
is left alone, and whiles away the hours by 
reading the novels of Mademoiselle de Scud6ri. 
Her three great novels, Clelia, The Grand 
Cyrus and Ibrahim, are historical allegories, 
in which the France of Louis XIV is given an 
historical setting, and his courtiers masquerade 
under the names of famous men of antiquity. 
There is no attempt at historical accuracy. 
But to Arabella these books represented true 
history and depicted the real life of the world. 

In a fine satirical passage Arabella informs 



Mrs, Lennox 33 

Mr. Selvin, a man so deeply read in ancient 
history that he fixed the date of any occurrence 
by Olympiads, not years, that Pisistratus had 
been inspired to enslave his country because of 
his love for Cleorante. Mr. Selvin wonders 
how this important fact could have escaped his 
own research, and conceives a great admiration 
for Arabella's learning. 

In the novels of Mademoiselle de Scud^ri the 
characters, even in moments of extreme danger, 
entertain each other with stories of their past 
experiences. When Arabella has unexpected 
guests she bids her maid relate to them the his- 
tory of her mistress. She instructs her to "re^ 
late exactly every change of my countenance, 
number all my smiles, half-smiles, blushes, turn- 
ings pale, glances, pauses, full-stops, interrup- 
tions; the rise and falling of my voice, every 
motion of my eyes, and every gesture which I 
have used for these ten years past: nor omit 
the smallest circumstance that relates to me." 

All the people Arabella meets are changed by 
her fancy into the characters of her favourite 
books. In common people she sees princes in 
disguise. If a man approaches her, she fancies 
that he is about to bear her away to some re- 
mote castle, or to mention the subject of love, 
which would be unpardonable, unless he had 
first captured cities in her behalf. Yet amid the 
wildest extravagances Arabella never loses her 



34 Woman's Work in Fiction 

charm. Her generosity and purity of thought 
make her a very lovable heroine, much more 
womanly than Clarissa or Sophia Western, and 
we do not wonder that Mr. Glanville continues 
to love her, although he is so often annoyed by 
her ridiculous fancies. 

But her belief in her hallucinations is as firm 
as that of the Spanish Quixote for whom the 
book was named. Everyone will remember 
his attack on the windmills, which he mistook 
for giants. Arabella was equally brave. Think- 
ing herself and some other ladies pursued, when 
the Thames cuts off their escape, she addresses 
her companions in language becoming one of 
her favourite heroines: "Once more, my fair 
Companions, if your honour be dear to you, if 
an immortal glory be worth your seeking, 
follow the example I shall set you, and equal, with 
me, the Roman Clelia." She plunged into the 
river, but was promptly rescued. The doctor 
who attended her in the illness that followed 
this heroic deed convinced her of the folly of 
trying to live according to these old books, 
and she consented to marry her faithful and 
deserving lover. 

The character of Arabella is not drawn with 
the broad strong lines of Fielding, nor with the 
attention to minute detail which gives life to the 
characters of Richardson. But the girlish sweet- 
ness of Arabella, her refusal to believe wrong of 



Mrs. Lennox 35 

others, her ignorance of life, her contempt for 
a lover who has not shed blood nor captured 
cities in her behalf, is a reality, and shows that 
the author knew the nature of the romantic 
girl. In the noble simplicity of Arabella, Mrs. 
Lennox has, perhaps unconsciously, paid a high 
tribute to the moral effects of the novels of 
Scud^ri. Arabella is the only clearly drawn 
character in the book. But one humorous 
situation follows another, so that the interest 
never flags. 

The other novels of Mrs. Lennox have no 
value save as they show the trend of thought 
of the period. In Henrietta, afterward dra- 
matised as The Sister, the heroine, grand- 
daughter of an earl, rather than change her 
religion, leaves her family and becomes the 
maid of a rich but vulgar tradesman's daughter. 
Of course her mistress, who has treated her 
scurrilously, in time learns her true rank and is 
properly humbled. The name given to one of the 
chapters might suffice for the most of them: 
"In which our heroine is in great distress." 

This would seem to be the proper heading 
for many chapters of many books of the period. 
In the days of Good Queen Bess, heroines were 
good and happy. In the merry reign of Charles, 
they were bad but happy. Pamela set a 
fashion from which heroines seldom dared to 
deviate for over a hundred years. They were 



36 Woman's Work in Fiction 

good — but, oh, so wretched! This type of 
women became such a favourite with both 
sexes, that even the sane-minded Scott says: 

And love is loveliest when embalmed in tears. 

During her period of distress Henrietta 
lodged with a milliner. Her landlady showed 
her a small collection of books and pointed with 
especial pleasure to her favourite novels: 
"There is Mrs. Haywood's Novels, did you 
ever read them? Oh! they are the finest love- 
sick passionate stories: I assure you, you'll 
like them vastly." Henrietta, however, chose 
Joseph Andrews for her diversion. Mrs. Eliza 
Haywood was never admitted into that inner 
circle of highly respectable English ladies who 
clustered around Richardson. She was more 
of an adventuress in the domain of letters. 
In her first novels she followed the fashion set 
by Mrs. Manley and supplied the public with 
scandals in high life. Memoirs of a Certain 
Island Adjacent to Utopia, published in 1725, 
The Secret Intrigues of the Count of Caramania, 
published in 1727, are the highly suggestive titles 
of two of the most popular of her early works. 

After Richardson had made Virtue more popu- 
lar than Vice, Mrs. Haywood followed the liter- 
ary fashion which he had set, and in 1751 
wrote The History of Miss Betsey Thoughtless. 
This has sometimes been called a domestic novel. 



Mrs. Haywood 37 

but that is a misnomer, since the characters 
are seldom found at home, but rather are met 
in the various pleasure resorts of London. As 
was the fashion in the novels of this time, and 
probably not an uncommon occurrence in the 
English capital, the heroine was often forced 
into a chariot by some lawless libertine, but 
fortunately was always rescued by some more 
virtuous lover. The whole story is but a new 
arrangement of the one or two incidents with 
which Richardson had wrung the heart of the 
British public. It has one advantage over the 
most of the novels which had preceded it. 
There is little told that does not bear directly on 
the plot, the characters of the sub-plot being 
important personages in the main story, and the 
book has a definite conclusion. 

None of the characters, however, are pleasing. 
The hero, Mr. Trueworthy, a combination of 
Tom Jones and Sir Charles Grandison, is a 
hypocrite. The other male characters are insig- 
nificant. Miss Betsey, the heroine, is almost 
charming. Conscious of her own innocence, she 
repeatedly appears in a light that makes her 
worldly lover, Mr. Trueworthy, suspect her 
virtue, until at last he begs to be released from 
his engagement to her. The author of the book 
stands as a duenna at Miss Betsey's side, and 
points out by the misfortunes of the heroine 
how foolish it is for girls to ignore public opinion, 



38 Woman's Work in Fiction 

and strives to inculcate the lesson that a husband 
is the best protection for a young girl. We are 
properly shocked at Miss Betsey's levity, who, 
although she had arrived at the mature age 
of fourteen, cared not a straw for any of the 
gentlemen who sought her hand, but liked to 
have them about her only because they flattered 
her vanity or afforded her a subject for mirth. 
Miss Betsey's gaiety, wit, and generosity would 
be very attractive — in fact, she is quite an up- 
to-date young lady — but we see how much bet- 
ter she would "get on" if she had a little more 
worldly wisdom. She is punished, as she deserves 
to be, by losing her lover, and marries a man 
who makes her very unhappy. Mr. Trueworthy, 
however, learns of her innocence; her hus- 
band fortunately dies, and the author takes 
the bold step of uniting the widow to her 
former lover, after a year of mourning and 
passing through much suffering, brought upon 
herself by her own thoughtlessness. She is re- 
warded, however, very much as Pamela was 
rewarded, by marrying a man of honour, who 
had judged her formerly by his own conduct, 
being too willing to believe by appearances that 
she had lost her chastity, or, at least, had sullied 
her good name. 

In this novel, Mrs. Haywood is very near the 
line that divides the artist from the artisan. 
Like a young girl with good health and good 



Mrs. Sheridan 



39 



spirits, Miss Betsey is ever on the verge of 
sweeping aside the prejudices of her duenna, and 
asserting her own individuality, but is constantly 
held back by the sense of worldly propriety. 
Had Mrs. Haywood permitted Miss Betsey to 
carry the plot whither she would without let or 
hindrance, she would have won for herself an 
acknowledged place among the heroines of 
fiction. 

The History of Miss Betsey Thoughtless was 
an epoch-making book. The adventures of its 
heroine in the city of London took possession of 
the imagination of Fanny Burney, while little 
more than a child, and led to the story of Evelina, 
the forerunner of Jane Austen and her school. 

The fashion for weeping heroines was at its 
height, when, in 1761, Mrs. Francis Sheridan 
published The Memoirs of Miss Sidney Biddulph. 
The story is written in the form of letters, in 
which the heroine reveals to a friend of her 
own sex all the secrets of her heart. All Lon- 
don rejoiced over the virtues of Sidney Bid- 
dulph, and wept over her sorrows. She had 
been educated "in the strictest principles of 
virtue; from which she never deviated, through 
the course of an innocent, though unhappy 
life." It was so pathetic a story that Dr. 
Johnson doubted if Mrs. Sheridan had a right 
to make her characters suffer so much, and 



40 Woman's Work in Fiction 

Charles James Fox, who sat up all night to read 
it, pronounced it the best of all novels of his 
time. 

The book, as first written, was in three volumes. 
The author had brought the story to a most 
fitting close. Both Sidney's husband and the 
man whom she had really loved were dead, and 
the widow could have spent her days in pleasing 
melancholy, contented with the thought that 
she had never done a wrong. But the public 
demanded a continuation of the story. In 
1767, two volumes were added, giving the his- 
tory of Sidney's daughters, who seem to have 
inherited from their mother the enmity of 
the fates, for their sufferings were as great as 
hers. 

Authors are prone to draw upon their own 
history for the emotions they depict. But Mrs. 
Sheridan's life did not furnish the tragic ele- 
ments of Sidney Biddulph, although it was not 
without romance. Before her marriage, she 
wrote a pamphlet in praise of the conduct of one 
Thomas Sheridan, the manager of the Theatre 
Royal in Dublin, during a riot that occurred in 
the theatre. Sheridan read these words in his 
praise, sought the acquaintance of their author, 
and before long married her. 

History furnishes a long list of women of talent 
whose sons were men of genius. Mrs. Sheridan's 
second son, Richard Brinsley, the author of the 



Mrs. Sheridan 41 

light and sparkling Rivals, inherited his mother's 
talents without her gloom. But Mrs. Sheridan 
also had some ability as a writer of comedy, 
and the most famous character of the Rivals 
was first sketched by her. In a comedy, A 
Journey to Bath, declined by Garrick, one of 
the characters was Mrs. Twyford, whom Richard 
Brinsley Sheridan transformed into that famous 
blundering coiner of words, Mrs. Malaprop. 

Mrs. Sheridan's place in literature rests upon 
Sidney Biddulph. This novel was an innovation 
in English fiction. Nearly one hundred years 
earlier, Madame de Lafayette had written The 
Princess of Cleves, one of the most nearly perfect 
novels that has ever been written, and the first 
that depended for its interest, not alone on 
what was done, but on the subtle workings of 
the human heart which led to the doing of it. 
From that time the novels of French women 
were largely introspective. English women, 
however, were either less interested in the 
inner life, or more reserved in laying bare its 
secrets. Sidney Biddulph was the first Eng- 
lish novel of this kind, and it left no definite 
trace on fiction, although it was the favourite 
novel of Charlotte Smith and had some slight 
effect upon her writings, and Mrs. Inchbald, 
Mrs. Opie, and Mary Brunton noted the feelings 
of their characters. Not until Jane Eyre was 
published, long after Mrs. Sheridan had been 



42 Woman's Work in Fiction 

forgotten, was there any great English novel 
of the inner life. 

In its day Sidney Biddulph was exceedingly 
popular on the continent of Europe as well 
as in England. It was translated into German, 
and an adaptation of it was made in French by 
the Abbe Prevost, under the title, Memoirs pour 
servir a Vhistoire de la vertu. But after all, 
Sidney's sorrows were not real, or she herself 
was not real; and we of to-day smile or yawn 
over the pages that drew tears from the eyes of 
the mighty Dr. Johnson. 

Notwithstanding the many excellencies of Eng- 
lish fiction during the middle of the eigh- 
teenth century, it was held in low repute. There 
had been many writers attempting to portray 
real life who, without the genius of the greater 
novelists, could imitate only their faults. In 
the preface to Polly Honeycomb, which was 
acted at Drury Lane theatre in 1760, George 
Colman, the author, gives the titles of about two 
hundred novels whose names appeared in a cir- 
culating library at that time. Amorous Friars, 
or the Intrigues of a Convent; Beauty put to Us 
Shifts, or the Young Virgin's Rambles; Bubbled 
Knights, or Successful Contrivances, plainly evinc- 
ing, in two Familiar Instances lately transacted 
in this Metropolis, the Folly and Unreasonableness 
of Parents Laying a Restraint upon their Chil- 



Mrs. Sheridan 43 

dren's Inclinations in the Affairs of Love and 
Marriage; The Impetuous Lover, or the Guiltless 
Parricide; these are the titles of a few of the 
popular books of that period. Colman in the 
character of Polly Honeycomb, an earlier Lydia 
Languish, attempts to show the moral effects of 
such reading. Her head had been so turned by 
these books that her father exclaims, "A man 
might as well turn his daughter loose in Covent- 
Garden, as trust the cultivation of her mind to 

A CIRCULATING LIBRARY." 

Fiction at this time lacked delicacy and 
refinement. The characters lived largely in the 
streets or taverns, and were too much engrossed 
in the pleasures of active life to give any heed to 
thoughts or emotions. Though love was the 
constant theme of these books, as yet no true love 
story had been written. The fires of home had 
not been lighted. The refinements, the pure af- 
fections, the high ideals which cluster around 
the domestic hearth had as yet no place in the 
novel. It needed the feminine element, which, 
while no broader than that which had pre- 
viously made the novel, by its own addition 
gave something new to it and made it truer to 
life. 

While no woman of marked genius had ap- 
peared, the number and influence of women 
novelists continued to increase throughout the 
eighteenth century. Tim Cropdale in the novel 



44 Woman's Work in Fiction 

Humphry Clinker, who "had made shift to 
live many years by writing novels, at the 
rate of five pounds a volume," complains that 
"that branch of business is now engrossed by 
female authors, who publish merely for the pro- 
pagation of virtue, with so much ease, and spirit, 
and delicacy, and knowledge of the human 
heart, and all in the serene tranquillity of high 
life, that the reader is not only enchanted by 
their genius, but reformed by their morality." 
Schlosser in his History of the Eighteenth Century 
pays this tribute to the moral influence of the 
women novelists: "With the increase of the 
number of writers in England in the course of 
the eighteenth century, women began to appear 
as authors instead of educating their children, 
and their influence upon morals and modes 
of thinking increased, as that of the clergy 
diminished." 



CHAPTER III 

Fanny Burney 

A NOTEWORTHY transformation took place 
in the English novel during the late years 
of the eighteenth century and the early part of 
the nineteenth. This change cannot be explained 
by the great difference in manners only. The 
mode of life described by the early novelists was 
in existence sixty years after they wrote scenes 
typical of the customs and manners of their 
day, just as the quiet home life described by 
Miss Austen was to be found in England a 
hundred years before it graced the pages of a 
book. This new era in the English novel was 
due not to a change of environment, but to the 
new ideals of those who wrote. 

In 1778, English fiction was represented by 
the work of Miss Burney, and for thirty-six 
years, until 18 14, when Waver ley appeared, this 
rare plant was preserved and kept alive by a 
group of women, who trimmed and pruned off 
many of its rough branches and gave to the 
wild native fruit a delicacy and fragrance un- 
known to it before. English women writers did 
45 



46 Woman's Work in Fiction 

at that time for the English novel what French 
women had done in the preceding century for 
the French novel; they made it so pure in 
thought and expression that Bishop Huet was 
able to say of the French romances of the seven- 
teenth century, "You '11 scarce find an expression 
or word which may shock chaste ears, or one 
single action which may give offence to modesty." 
This great change in the English novel Was 
inaugurated by a young woman ignorant of the 
world, whose power lay in her innocent and 
lively imagination. At his home in Queen 
Square and later in St. Martin's Street, Charles 
Burney, the father of Frances, entertained the 
most illustrious men of his day. Johnson, 
Reynolds, Garrick, Burke, and Colman were 
frequent guests, while members of the nobility 
thronged his parlours to listen to the famous 
Italian singers who gladly sang for the author of 
the History of Music. Here Fanny, a bashful 
but observant child, saw life in the drawing- 
room. But as Dr. Burney gave little heed to 
the comings and goings of his daughters, they 
played with the children of a wigmaker next 
door, where, perhaps, Fanny became acquainted 
with the vulgar side of London life, which is so 
humorously depicted in Evelina. She received 
but little education, nor was she more than a 
casual reader, but she was familar with Pamela , 
Betsey Thoughtless, Rasselas, and the Vicar of 



Fanny Burney 47 

Wakefield. Such was her preparation for becom- 
ing a writer of novels. 

From her earliest years, she had delighted 
in writing stories and dramas, although she 
received little encouragement in this occupa- 
tion. In her fifteenth year her step-mother 
proved to her so conclusively the folly of 
girls' scribbling that Fanny burned all her 
manuscripts, including The History of Caroline 
Evelyn. She could not, however, banish from 
her mind the fate of Caroline's infant daughter, 
born of high rank, but related through her 
grandmother to the vulgar people of the East 
End of London. The many embarrassing situa- 
tions in which she might be placed haunted the 
imagination of the youthful writer, but it was 
not until her twenty-sixth year that these situa- 
tions were described, when Evelina or a Young 
Lady's Entrance into the World was published. 

The success of the book was instantaneous. 
The name of the author, which had been with- 
held even from the publishers, was eagerly 
demanded. All agreed that only a man con- 
versant with the world could have written 
such accurate descriptions of life both high and 
low. The wonder was increased when it was 
learned that the author was a young woman 
who had drawn her scenes, not from a knowledge 
of the world, but from her own intuition and 
imagination. Miss Burney became at once 



48 Woman's Work in Fiction 

an honoured member of the literary circle which 
Mrs. Thrale had gathered at Streatham, and a 
favourite of Dr. Johnson, who declared that 
Evelina was superior to anything that Field- 
ing had written, and that some passages were 
worthy of the pen of Richardson. The book 
was accorded a place among English classics, 
which it has retained for over a century. "It 
was not hard fagging that produced such a 
work as Evelina" wrote Mr. Crisp to the youth- 
ful author. ' ' It was the ebullition of true sterling 
genius — you wrote it because you could not help 
it — it came — and so you put it down on paper." 

The novel, following the form so common 
in the eighteenth century, is written in the form 
of letters. The plot is somewhat time-honoured ; 
there is the nurse's daughter substituted for the 
real heiress, and a mystery surrounding some 
of the characters; it is unfolded slowly with 
a slight strain upon the readers' credulity at 
the last, but it ends to the satisfaction of all 
concerned. In many incidents and in some of the 
characters the story suggests Betsey Thoughtless, 
but Miss Burney had greater powers of descrip- 
tion than Mrs. Haywood. 

The plot of the novel is forgotten, however, in 
the lively, witty manner in which the characters 
are drawn and the ludicrous situations in which 
they are placed. So long had these men and 
women held the mind of the author that they are 



Fanny Burney 49 

intensely real as they are presented to us at 
assemblies, balls, theatres, and operas, where we 
watch their oddities with amusement. 

Indeed no woman has given so many graphic, 
droll, and minute descriptions of life as Miss 
Burney. Her genius in this respect is different 
from that of other women novelists. She has 
made a series of snap-shots of people in the most 
absurd situations and ridicules them while she is 
taking the picture. Few women writers can 
resist the temptation of peeping into the hearts 
of their men and women, and the knowledge 
thus gained gives them sympathy, while it often 
detracts from the strong lines of the external 
picture; a writer will not paint a villain quite 
so black if he believes he still preserves some 
remnants of a noble nature. But Miss Burney 
has no interest in the inner life of her men and 
women. She saw their peculiarities and was 
amused by them, and has presented them to the 
reader with minute descriptions and lively wit. 

She also makes fine distinctions between peo- 
ple. Sir Clement Willoughby, the West End 
snob, and Mr. Smith, the East End beau, are 
drawn with discrimination. With what wit 
Miss Burney describes the scene at the ridotto 
between Evelina and Sir Clement. He had 
asked her to dance with him. Unwilling to do so, 
because she wished to dance with another gentle- 
man, if he should ask her, she told Sir Clement 



5° 



Woman's Work in Fiction 



she was engaged for that dance. He did not 
leave her, however, but remained by her side 
and speculated as to who the beast was so 
hostile to his own interests as to forget to come 
to her; pitied the humiliation a lady must feel 
in having to wait for a gentleman, and pointed 
to each old and lame man in the room asking 
if he were the miscreant; he offered to find him 
for her and asked what kind of a coat he had on. 
When Evelina did not know, he became angry 
with the wretch who dared to address a lady 
in so insignificant a coat that it was unworthy 
of her notice. To save herself from further 
annoyance she danced with him, for she now 
knew that Sir Clement had seen through her 
artifice from the beginning. 

But the portrait of Mr. Smith, the East End 
snob, is even better than that of Sir Clement 
Willoughby. Evelina is visiting her relatives 
at Snow Hill, when Mr. Smith enters, self- 
confident and vulgar. His aim in life, as he 
tells us, is to please the ladies. When Tom 
Branghton is disputing with his sister about 
the place where they shall go for amusement, he 
reprimands Tom for his lack of good breeding. 

"0 fie, Tom, — dispute with a lady!" cried 
Mr. Smith. "Now, as for me, I 'm for where 
you will, providing this young lady [meaning 
Evelina] is of the party; one place is the same 
as another to me, so that it be but agreeable to 



Fanny Burney 51 

the ladies. I would go anywhere with you, 
Ma'm, unless, indeed, it were to church; — ha, ha, 
ha, you '11 excuse me, Ma'm, but, really, I never 
could conquer my fear of a parson; — ha, ha, ha, 
— really, ladies, I beg your pardon, for being 
so rude, but I can't help laughing for my life." 

Mr. Smith endeavoured to make himself 
particularly pleasing to Evelina, and for that 
purpose bought tickets for her and her relatives 
to attend the Hampstead Assembly. When he 
observed that Evelina was a little out of sorts, 
he attributed her low spirits to doubts of his 
intentions towards her. "To be sure," he told 
her, "marriage is all in all with the ladies; but 
with us gentlemen it 's quite another thing." He 
advised her not to be discouraged, saying with 
a patronising air, "You may very well be proud, 
for I assure you there is nobody so likely to 
catch me at last as yourself." 

Both Sir Clement Willoughby and Mr. Smith 
are selfish and conceited; but the former had 
lived among the gentlemen of Mayfair, the 
latter among the tradespeople of Snow Hill, and 
this difference of environment is shown in every 
speech they utter. 

It is the contrast between these two distinct 
classes of society that saves the book from 
becoming monotonous. Evelina visits the Pan- 
theon with her West End friends. When Cap- 
tain Mirvan wonders what people find in such 



52 Woman's Work in Fiction 

a place, Mr. Lovel, a fashionable fop, quickly 
rejoins: "What the ladies may come hither 
for, Sir, it would ill become us to determine ; 
but as to we men, doubtless we can have no 
other view, than to admire them." At another 
time Evelina visits the opera with the vulgar 
Branghtons, who all rejoiced when the curtain 
dropped, and Mr. Branghton vowed he would 
never be caught again. The Branghtons at the 
opera is hardly inferior to Partridge at the play. 
Tom Branghton is a good representative of his 
class. He describes with glee the last night at 
Vauxhall: "There 's such squealing and squall- 
ing! — and then all the lamps are broke, — and 
the women skimper scamper; — I declare I would 
not take five guineas to miss the last night!" 

All the characters, even the heroine, take de- 
light in boisterous mirth. Much of the humour 
of the book consists rather in ludicrous situations 
than in any real delicacy of wit. Too often 
the laugh is at another's discomfiture, and so 
fails to please the present age with its kindlier 
feeling towards others. Such are the practical 
jokes which Captain Mirvan plays upon Madame 
Duval. In one instance, disguised as a robber, 
he waylays the lady's coach, and leaves her in a 
ditch with her feet tied to a tree. The many 
tricks which the doughty Salt plays upon this 
lady so much resemble some of the humorous 
scenes in Joseph Andrews, and Tom Jones 



Fanny Burney 53 

that we may infer the readers of that century 
found them laughable. The Captain and the 
French woman are two puppets which serve to 
introduce much of this horse-play. They are 
not even caricatures; they are entirely unlike 
anything in human life. With the exception 
of these two characters, all the men and women 
who provoked the mirth of the heroine are well 
portrayed. 

Miss Burney is less felicitous in her descriptions 
of serious characters. Lord Orville, the same 
type of man as Sir Charles Grandison, is true 
only in the sense that Miss Burney announces 
the truth of the entire book. "I have not pre- 
tended to show the world what it actually is, 
but what it appears to a girl of seventeen," she 
wrote in the preface to Evelina. Lord Orville, 
all dignity, nobility, charm, and perfection, is 
but the ideal of a young girl. 

Evelina was a new woman in literature, a 
revelation to the men of the time of George the 
Third. The sincerity of the book could not 
be doubted. "But," they asked, "did Evelina 
represent the woman's point of view of life? 
Surely no man ever held like views." The 
Lovelaces and Tom Joneses are not so attractive 
as when seen through the eyes of their own 
sex, and the heroines are not so soft and yielding 
as a man would create them. Evelina, like all 
Miss Burney's heroines, is independent, fearless, 



54 Woman's Work in Fiction 

and witty, with scarcely a trace of the tradi- 
tional heroine of fiction. Saints and Mag- 
dalenes have always appealed to the masculine 
imagination. La donna dolorosa has occupied 
a prominent place in the art and literature of 
man's creation. Here he has revealed his sex 
egoism in all its nudity: the woman weeping 
for man, either lover, husband, or son; man the 
centre of her thoughts, her hopes and fears. 
This new heroine with a new regard towards 
man was a revelation to them. Evelina was the 
first woman to break the spell, to show them 
woman as woman, in lieu of woman as parasite 
and adjunct to man. Evelina is not always 
pleasing; she hasn't always good manners; 
she sometimes laughs in the faces of the dashing 
beaux who are addressing her. But she is a 
woman of real flesh and blood; such women have 
existed in all time, and, like many women we 
meet every day and whom men in all ages have 
known, Evelina insists on being the centre of 
every scene. 

In July, 1782, Miss Burney's second book, 
Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress, was published. 
This novel met with as enthusiastic a reception as 
Evelina. Gibbon read the whole five volumes 
in a day; Burke declared they had cost him 
three days, though he did not part with the 
story from the time he first opened it, and had 
sat up a whole night to finish it; and Sir Joshua 



Fanny Burney 55 

Reynolds had been fed while reading it, because 
he refused to quit it at the table. 

The book shows more care and effort than 
Evelina. That was an outburst of youthful vi- 
vacity and spirits, but in Cecilia the author 
is striving to do her best. This is particularly 
revealed in the style, which shows the influence 
of Doctor Johnson, for it has lost the simplicity 
of Evelina. The diction is more ambitious, and 
the sentences are longer, many of them balanced. 
Even some of the inferior characters from their 
speech, appear to have received a lesson in 
English composition from Dr. Johnson. 

But the novel owes its place among English 
classics to the varieties of characters portrayed 
and the vivid pictures of English life. Here 
again the gaieties of Vauxhall, Ranelagh, Maryle- 
bone and the Pantheon have become immortal, 
drawn with colours as vivid and enduring as 
Hogarth used in painting the sadder sides of 
London life. No other writer has brought these 
places before our eyes as clearly and as fully 
as Fanny Burney. 

The plot of Cecilia, like that of Evelina, is so 
arranged as to present different classes of society. 
Cecilia has three guardians, with one of whom she 
must live during her minority. First she visits 
Mr. Harrel, a gay, fashionable man, a spendthrift 
and a gambler, who lives in a fashionable house 
in Portman Square, where Cecilia, during a con- 



56 Woman's Work in Fiction 

stant round of festivities, meets the fashionable 
people of London. Next she visits Mr. Briggs in 
the City, "a short thick,, sturdy man, with very 
small keen black eyes, a square face, a dark 
complexion, and a snub nose." He was so 
miserly that when Cecilia asked for pen, ink, 
and a sheet of paper, he gave her a slate and 
pencil, as he supposed she had nothing of 
consequence to say. He was as sparing of 
his words as of his money, and used the same 
elliptical sentences in his speech as Dickens 
afterwards put into the mouth of Alfred Jin- 
gle, the famous character in Pickwick Pa- 
pers. He thus advises Cecilia in regard to 
her lovers: "Take care of sharpers; don't 
trust shoe-buckles, nothing but Bristol stones! 
tricks in all things. A fine gentleman sharp 
as another man. Never give your heart to 
a gold-topped cane, nothing but brass gilt over. 
Cheats everywhere: fleece you in a year; won't 
leave you a groat. But one way to be safe, 
— bring 'em all to me." Lastly she visits Mr. 
Del vile, her third guardian, a man of family, 
who despised both the men associated with 
him as trustees of Cecilia; he lived in such 
gloomy state in his magnificent old house 
in St. James's Square that it inspired awe, 
and repressed all pleasure. Pride in their birth 
and prejudice against all parvenus were the 
faults of Mr. and Mrs. Del vile. 



Fanny Burney 57 

Besides these characters, there were many 
others whose names were for a long time famil- 
iar in every household. Sir Robert Floyer was 
as vain as Mr. Smith. Mr. Meadows was con- 
stantly bored to death ; it was insufferable exer- 
tion to talk to a quiet woman, and a talkative one 
put him into a fever. At the opera the solos de- 
pressed him and the full orchestra fatigued 
him. He yawned while ladies were talking to 
him, and after he had begged them to repeat 
what they had said, forgot to listen. "I am 
tired to death! tired of everything," was his 
constant expression. 

In his critical essay on Madame D'Arblay, 
Fanny Burney's married name, under which 
her later works were published, Macaulay has 
thus dealt with her treatment of character: 

"Madame D'Arblay has left us scarcely any- 
thing but humours. Almost every one of her 
men and women has some one propensity 
developed to a morbid degree. In Cecilia, 
for example, Mr. Del vile never opens his lips 
without some allusion to his own birth and 
station; or Mr. Briggs without some allusion 
to the hoarding of money; or Mr. Hobson, 
without betraying the self-indulgence and self- 
importance of a purse-proud upstart; or Mr. 
Simkins, without uttering some sneaking remark 
for the purpose of currying favour with his 
customers; or Mr. Meadows, without expressing 



58 Woman's Work in Fiction 

apathy and weariness of life; or Mr. Albany, 
without declaiming about the vices of the rich 
and the misery of the poor; or Mrs. Belfield, 
without some indelicate eulogy on her son; 
or Lady Margaret, without indicating jealousy 
of her husband. Morrice is all skipping, officious 
impertinence, Mr. Gosport all sarcasm, Lady 
Honoria all lively prattle, Miss Larolles all silly 
prattle; if ever Madame D'Arblay aimed at 
more, as in the character of Monckton, we do 
not think that she succeeded well. . . . The 
variety of humours which is to be found in her 
novels is immense; and though the talk of each 
person separately is monotonous, the general 
effect is not monotony, but a most lively and 
agreeable diversity." 

While the character of Monckton is not strongly 
drawn, one or two scenes in which he figures 
have great power. Mr. Monckton, who had 
married an aged woman for her money, lived in 
constant hope of her dissolution. He planned 
to keep Cecilia from marrying until that happy 
event, when he schemed to make her his bride, 
and thus acquire a second fortune. He had 
used his influence as a family friend to prejudice 
her lovers in her eyes, and had just succeeded 
in breaking up an intimacy which he feared: 
"A weight was removed from his mind which 
had nearly borne down even his remotest hopes ; 
the object of his eager pursuit seemed still 



Fanny Burney 59 

within his reach, and the rival into whose power 
he had so lately almost beheld her delivered, was 
totally renounced, and no longer to be dreaded. 
A revolution such as this, raised expectations 
more sanguine than ever; and in quitting the 
house, he exultingly considered himself released 
from every obstacle to his view, — till, just as he 
arrived home, he recollected his wife ! " 

Cecilia, the heroine of the novel, is only 
Evelina grown a little older, a little sadder, a 
little more worldly wise. The humour is, too, a 
little kindlier. The practical jokes so common 
in Evelina do not mar the pages of Cecilia. 
At times the latter novel becomes almost tragic. 
The scene at Vauxhall where Mr. Harrel puts 
an end to his life of dissipation is dramatic and 
thrilling. But Miss Burney had lost the buoy- 
ancy and lively fancy which made the charm of 
Evelina. 

Miss Burney's last two novels, Camilla, or a 
Picture of Youth and The Wanderer y or Female 
Difficulties, have no claim to a place among 
English classics. It is strange that, as she saw 
more of life, she depicted it with less accuracy. 
This might seem to show that her first novels owe 
their excellence to her vivid imagination rather 
than to her powers of observation. Her weary 
life at court as second keeper of the robes 
to Queen Charlotte; her marriage to Monsieur 
D'Arblay, and the sorrows that came to her as 



60 Woman's Work in Fiction 

the wife of a French refugee; all her deeper 
experiences of life during the fourteen years be- 
tween the publication of Cecilia and Camilla — 
these had completely changed her light, humor- 
ous view of externals, and with that loss her 
power as an artist disappeared. 

Camilla has several heroines whose love 
affairs interest the reader. It thus bears a 
resemblance to Miss Austen's novels, who speaks 
of it with admiration and was, perhaps, in- 
fluenced by it. Eugenia, who has received the 
education of a man, is pleasing. Clermont 
Lynmere, like Mr. Smith and Sir Robert Floyer, 
imagines that all the ladies are in love with him. 
Sir Hugh Tyrold, with his love for the classics 
and his regret that he had not been beaten into 
learning them when he was a boy, his strict 
ideas of virtue and his desire to make everybody 
happy, is well conceived, but the outlines are not 
strong enough to make him a living character. 
Camilla shows more than Cecilia the style of 
Dr. Johnson. It is heavy and slow, the words 
are long, and many of them of Latin derivation. 

It was not until the year 1814, the year of 
Waverley, that her last novel, The Wanderer, 
or Female Difficulties, was published, which, 
following the style of Camilla, was in five vol- 
umes. It was partly founded on incidents aris- 
ing out of the French Revolution. The book 
was eagerly awaited ; the publishers paid fifteen 



Fanny Burney 61 

hundred guineas for it; but even the friendliest 
critic pronounced it a literary failure. 

To sum up, Macaulay in the essay before 
quoted makes clear Miss Burney's place in 
fiction : 

"Miss Burney did for the English novel 
what Jeremy Collier did for the English drama; 
and she did it in a better way. She first showed 
that a tale might be written in which both the 
fashionable and the vulgar life of London might 
be exhibited with great force and with broad 
comic humour, and which yet should not con- 
tain a single line inconsistent with rigid morality, 
or even with virgin delicacy. She took away the 
reproach which lay on a most useful and delight- 
ful species of composition. She vindicated the 
right of her sex to an equal share in a fair and 
noble province of letters . . . we owe to her 
not only Evelina, Cecilia, and Camilla, but also 
Mansfield Park and The Absentee." 



CHAPTER IV 

Hannah More 

DURING the time that Dr. Johnson domi- 
nated the literary conscience of England, 
a group of ladies who had wearied of whist and 
quadrille, the common amusements of fashion, 
used to meet at the homes of one another to dis- 
cuss literary and political subjects. They were 
called in ridicule the "Blue Stocking Club," be- 
cause Mr. Benjamin Stillingfleet, who was always 
present at these gatherings, wore hose of that 
colour. Among the members distinguished by 
their wit and talents were Mrs. Elizabeth Mon- 
tagu, the author of an Essay on the Genius of 
Shakespeare-, Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, a poetess 
and excellent Greek scholar; Mrs. Chapone, whose 
Letters to Young Ladies formed the standard 
of conduct for young women of two generations ; 
Miss Reynolds, the sister of Sir Joshua; and 
Mrs. Vesey, noted as a charming hostess. Dr. 
Johnson, David Garrick, Reynolds, and Burke 
were frequenters of this club. One may well 
imagine that the conversation and wit of the Blue 
62 



Hannah More 63 

Stockings were far too rare to be understood 
by the grosser minds of the mere devotees of 
fashion, who in consequence threw a ridicule 
upon them which has always adhered to the 
name. 

Hannah More, who had already become known 
as a playwright, visited London in 1773, and 
at once was welcomed by this group. In a 
poem called The Bas Bleu, dedicated to Mrs. 
Vesey, she thus describes the pleasure of these 
meetings : 

Enlighten 'd spirits! You, who know 
What charms from polish'd converse flow, 
Speak, for you can, the pure delight 
When kindling sympathies unite; 
When correspondent tastes impart 
Communion sweet from heart to heart; 
You ne'er the cold gradations need 
Which vulgar souls to union lead ; 
No dry discussion to unfold 
The meaning caught ere well 't is told : 
In taste, in learning, wit, or science, 
Still kindled souls demand alliance: 
Each in the other joys to find 
The image answering to his mind. 

The Blue Stocking Club was composed largely 
of Tories, so that when all Europe became 
restless under the influence of the French 
Revolution, they strongly combated the level- 
ling doctrines of democracy. Hannah More in 



64 Woman's Work in Fiction 

particular, who had been conducting schools for 
the very poor near Bristol, saw how the teachings 
of the revolutionists affected men already prone 
to idleness and drink. To offset these influences, 
she published a little book with the following 
title-page: "Village Politics. Addressed to 
all the Mechanics, Journeymen, and Labour- 
ers, in Great Britain. By Will Chip, a country 
Carpenter." 

It is not a novel in the strict sense of the word, 
but in simple language, easily understood, it 
teaches the labouring people the inconsistent 
attitude of France, and the strength and safety 
of the English constitution. It is not a deep 
book, but has good work-a-day common-sense, 
such as keeps the world jogging on, ready to en- 
dure the ills it has rather than fly to others it 
knows not of. 

The book is in the form of a dialogue between 
Jack Anvil, the blacksmith, and Tom Hood, 
the mason. 

"Tom. But have you read the Rights of 
Man f 

"Jack. No, not I: I had rather by half read 
the Whole Duty of Man. I have but little time 
for reading, and such as I should therefore 
only read a bit of the best." 



"Tom. And what dost thou take a democrat 
to be? 



Hannah More 65 

"'Jack. One who likes to be governed by a 
thousand tyrants, and yet can't bear a king." 

"Tom. What is it to be an enlightened people? 

"Jack. To put out the light of the Gospel, 
confound right and wrong, and grope about in 
pitch darkness." 

"Tom. And what is benevolence? 

"Jack. Why, in the new-fangled language, 
it means contempt of religion, aversion to 
justice, overturning of law, doating on all 
mankind in general, and hating everybody in 
particular." 

For a long time the authorship of the book 
remained a secret, and Will Chip became a 
notable figure. The clergy and the land-owners 
in particular rejoiced over his homely common- 
sense, and distributed these pamphlets broad- 
cast over the land. One hundred thousand 
copies were sold in a short time. Village Pol- 
itics is said to have been one of the strongest 
influences in England to awaken the common 
people to the dangers which lie in a sudden 
overthrow of government. The book was 
timely, for that decade had become intoxicated 
by the name of Liberty. To-day democracy and 
equality are no longer feared. 

During many years Hannah More worked 
industriously among the poor of Cheddar and 
I 



66 Woman's Work in Fiction 

its vicinity. On a visit to the Cliffs of Ched- 
dar she found an ignorant, half-savage people, 
many of whom dwelt in the caves and fissures 
of the rocks, and earned a miserable subsistence 
by selling stalactites and other minerals native 
to the place, to the travellers who were attracted 
thither by the beautiful scenery. Among these 
people Hannah More opened a Sunday-school, 
and later a day school, where the girls were 
taught knitting, spinning, and sewing. A girl 
trained in her school was presented on her 
marriage day with five shillings, a pair of white 
stockings, and a new Bible. The teaching in 
the schools was so practical that within a year 
schools were opened in nine parishes. 

In this missionary work, Miss More became 
intimately acquainted not only with the very 
poor, but also with the rich farmers living in the 
neighbourhood and the prosperous tradespeople 
of the villages. From these better educated 
men she met with great opposition. One petty 
landlord met her request for assistance with the 
remark: "The lower classes are fated to be poor, 
ignorant and wicked ; and wise as you are, you 
cannot alter what is decreed. " Another man 
informed her that religion was the worst thing 
for the poor, it made them so lazy and useless. 

But the minds of the people had been awakened 
by the French Revolution. They were begin- 



Hannah More 67 

ning to think. Books and ballads attacking 
church and constitution were hawked through 
the country and placed within reach of all. 
To counteract the influence of these "corrupt 
and inflammatory publications" Hannah More, 
between the years 1 795-1 798, published The 
Cheap Repository, the first regular issue of this 
kind. Every month a story, a ballad, and a 
tract for Sunday were published. Hannah More 
knew so well the common reasoning and the 
mental attitude of those for whom she wrote, 
that she was able to make her lessons most 
effective. So great was the demand for these 
chap-books that over two million were sold 
the first year. 1 

These stories were divided into two classes, 
those for "persons of middle rank" and those 
for the common people. The former point out 
the dangers of pride and covetousness ; of sub- 
stituting abstract philosophy for religion; and 
warn masters not to forget their moral obliga- 
tions towards their servants. The latter aim to 
teach neatness, sobriety, regularity in church 
attendance, and point out the happiness of those 
who follow these precepts, and the misery of 
those who neglect them. 

> For a complete bibliography of these chap-books, 
see the Catalogue of English and American Chap-Books 
in Harvard College Library, pp. 8-10; compiled in part 
by Charles Welsh. 



68 Woman's Work in Fiction 

Her two best known stones are Mr. Fantom 
and The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain. Mr. 
Fantom: or the History of the New-Fashioned 
Philosopher, and his Man William was written 
to warn masters of the danger of teaching their 
servants disrespect for the Bible and for civil 
law. Mr. Fantom was a shallow man, who glided 
upon the surface of philosophy and culled those 
precepts which relieved his conscience from any 
moral obligations. When he was asked to 
help the poor in his own parish, he refused to 
consider their wants because his mind was so 
engrossed by the partition of Poland. Like 
Mrs. Jellyby of a later time, he was so much 
troubled by sufferings which he could not see 
that he neglected his family and servants. 
When he reprimanded his butler, William, for 
being intoxicated, the young man replied: 
"Why, sir, you are a philosopher, you know; 
and I have often overheard you say to your 
company, that private vices are public benefits; 
and so I thought that getting drunk was as 
pleasant a way of doing good to the public as 
any, especially when I could oblige my muster 
at the same time." In course of time William 
became a thief and a murderer, and expiated 
his crimes on the scaffold. 

In contrast to this is The Shepherd of Salis- 
bury Plain. This shepherd was contented with 
his lot, and says: "David was happier when he 



Hannah More 69 

kept his father's sheep on such a plain as this, 
and employed in singing some of his own psalms 
perhaps, than ever he was when he became 
king of Israel and Judah. And I dare say 
we should never have had some of the most 
D dutiful texts in all those fine psalms, if he 
had not been a shepherd, which enabled him to 
make so many fine comparisons and similitudes, 
as one may say, from country life, flocks of 
sheep, hills and valleys, fields of corn, and 
fountains of water." The shepherd's neat cot- 
tage with its simple furnishings, his frugal 
wife and industrious children are described in 
simple and convincing language. 

In the stories of the poor there are many 
interesting details of the everyday life of that 
class that did not blossom into heroes and 
heroines of romance for nearly half a century. 
Mrs. Sponge, in The History of Betty Brown, 
the St. Giles's Orange Girl, is a character that 
Dickens might have immortalised. Mrs. Sponge 
kept a little shop and a kind of eating-house for 
poor girls near the Seven Dials. She received 
stolen goods, and made such large profits in her 
business that she was enabled to become a 
broker among the poor. She loaned Betty five 
shillings to set her up in the orange business; 
she did not ask for the return of her money, but 
exacted a sixpence a day for its use, and was 
regarded by Betty, and the other girls whom 



70 Woman's Work in Fiction 

she thus befriended, as a benefactor. At last, 
Betty was rescued from the clutches of Mrs. 
Sponge. By industry and piety she became 
mistress of a handsome sausage-shop near the 
Seven Dials, and married a hackney coachman, 
the hero of one of Miss More's ballads : 

I am a bold coachman, and drive a good hack 
With a coat of five capes that quite covers my back; 
And my wife keeps a sausage-shop, not many miles 
From the narrowest alley in all broad St. Giles. 
Though poor, we are honest and very content, 
We pay as we go, for meat, drink, and for rent ; 
To work all the week I am able and willing, 
I never get drunk, and I waste not a shilling; 
And while at a tavern my gentleman tarries, 
The coachman grows richer than he whom he carries, 
And I 'd rather (said I), since it saves me from sin, 
Be the driver without, than the toper within. 

The Cheap Repository was written to teach 
moral precepts. Neither Hannah More nor her 
readers saw any artistic beauty in the sordid 
lives of this lower stratum of society. They 
were not interested in the superstitions of 
"Poor Sally Evans," who hung a plant called 
"midsummer-men" in her room on Midsummer 
eve so that she might learn by the bending of 
the leaves if her lover were true to her, and who 
consulted all the fortune-tellers that came to her 
door to learn whether the two moles on her 
cheek foretold two husbands or two children. 



Hannah More 71 

Hannah More recorded these simple fancies of 
poor Sally only to show her folly and the mis- 
fortunes that afterwards befell her on account 
of her superstitions. Writers of that century 
either laughed at the ignorant blunders of the 
poor, or used them to point a moral. An interest 
in them because they are human beings like 
ourselves with common frailties belongs to the 
next century. Nothing proves more conclu- 
sively the growth of the democratic idea than 
the changed attitude of the novel toward the 
ignorant and the criminal. 

Hannah More was always interested in the 
education of young ladies. She wrote a series 
of essays called Strictures on the Modern 
System of Female Education, in which she 
protested loudly against the tendency to give 
girls an ornamental rather than a useful educa- 
tion. This was so highly approved that she was 
asked to make suggestions for the education of 
the Princess Charlotte. This led to her writing 
Hints towards Forming the Character of a Young 
Princess. 

Hannah More finally embodied her theories on 
the education of women in a book which she 
thought might appeal most strongly to the young 
ladies themselves, C&lebs in Search of a Wife. 
Running through it, is a slight romance. Ccelebs, 
filled with admiration for Eve, as described 



72 Woman's Work in Fiction 

in Paradise Lost, where she is intent on her 
household duties, goes forth into the world to 
find, if possible, such a helpmate for himself. 
As he meets different women, he compares 
them with his ideal, and, finding them lacking, 
passes a severe criticism upon female education 
and accomplishments. Finally, he meets a 
lady with well-trained mind, who delights in 
works of charity and piety, one well calculated 
to conduct wisely the affairs of his household. 
She has besides proper humility, and accepts with 
gratitude the honour of becoming Ccelebs's wife. 

Until her death at the advanced age of eighty- 
eight years, Hannah More continued to write 
moral and religious essays, so that she was be- 
fore the public view for over fifty years. Mrs. 
S. C. Hall in her book Pilgrimages to English 
Shrines thus describes her in old age: 

"Hannah More wore a dress of very light 
green silk — a white China crape shawl was 
folded over her shoulders; her white hair was 
frizzled, after a by-gone fashion, above her brow, 
and that backed, as it were, by a very full double 
border of rich lace. The reality was as dissimilar 
from the picture painted by our imagination as 
anything could well be; such a sparkling, light, 
bright, ' summery '-looking old lady — more like 
a beneficent fairy, than the biting author of 
Mr. Fantom, though in perfect harmony with 
The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain." 



CHAPTER V 

Charlotte Smith. Mrs. Inchbald 

WHILE Hannah More was endeavouring 
to improve the condition of the poor 
by teaching them diligence and sobriety, a group 
of earnest men and women were writing books 
and pamphlets in which they claimed that pov- 
erty and ignorance were due to unjust laws. 
The writings of Voltaire and Rousseau had 
filled their minds with bright pictures of a 
democracy. These theories were considered most 
dangerous in England, but they were the the- 
ories which helped to shape the American 
constitution. Among these English revolution- 
ists were William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, 
Charlotte Smith, Mrs. Inchbald, and for a time 
Amelia Opie. 

The strongest political novel was Caleb Wil- 
liams by William Godwin. In this he shows 
how through law man may become the de- 
stroyer of man. This interest in the rights of 
man awakened interest in the condition of wo- 
men; and Mary Wollstonecraft, who afterward 
73 



74 Woman's Work in Fiction 

became Mrs. Godwin, wrote Vindication of the 
Rights of Woman. This pamphlet was declared 
contrary to the Bible and to Christian law, 
although all its demands have now been con- 
ceded. Charlotte Smith was also interested in 
the position of women and the laws affecting 
them. In Desmond she discussed freely a 
marriage problem which in her day seemed 
very bold, while in her private life she ignored 
British prejudices. 

She was the mother of twelve children and 
the wife of a man of many schemes, so that 
she was continually devising ways to extricate 
her large family from the financial difficulties 
into which he plunged them. At one time a friend 
suggested to her that her husband's attention 
should be turned toward religion. Her reply 
was: "Oh, for heaven's sake, do not put it into 
his head to take to religion, for if he does, he 
will instantly begin by building a cathedral." 
She is supposed to have caricatured him in the 
projector who hoped to make a fortune by 
manuring his estate with old wigs. But when 
her husband was imprisoned for debt, she 
shared his captivity, and began to write to sup- 
port her family. Although she died at the 
age of fifty-seven, she found time during her 
manifold cares to write thirty-eight volumes. 

But not only did Mrs. Smith endure sorrows 
as great as those of her favourite heroine, Sidney 



Charlotte Smith 75 

Biddulph, but one of her daughters was equally 
unfortunate. She was married unhappily, and 
returned with her three children for her mother 
to support. Mr. and Mrs. Smith, after twenty- 
three years of married life, agreed to live in 
separate countries, he in Normandy, and she in 
England, although they always corresponded 
and were interested in each other's welfare. 
Yet this separation, together with the revo- 
lutionary tendencies discovered in her writings, 
raised a storm of criticism against her. 

In Desmond, which was regarded as so danger- 
ous, Mrs. Smith has presented the following 
problem: Geraldine, the heroine, is married to a 
spendthrift, who attempts to retrieve his for- 
tunes by forcing his wife to become the mistress 
of his friend, the rich Due de Romagnecourt. 
To preserve her honour she leaves him, hoping 
to return to her mother's roof; but her mother 
refuses to receive her and bids her return to her 
husband. As she dares not do this, and is with- 
out money, a faithful friend, Desmond, takes her 
under his protection, asking no reward but the 
pleasure of serving her. Finally Geraldine re- 
ceives a letter informing her that her husband 
is ill. She returns to him, and nurses him until 
he dies; after a year of mourning she marries 
Desmond. 

How could a woman have behaved more 
virtuously than Geraldine? She is always high- 



76 Woman's Work in Fiction 

minded and actuated by the purest motives. 
But it was feared that her example might en- 
courage wives to desert their husbands, and 
consequently the novel was declared immoral. 

Desmond was published in 1792, when the 
feeling against France was very bitter in England. 
The plot, as it meanders slowly through three 
volumes, is constantly interrupted by political 
discussions. The author's clearly expressed 
preference for a republican government, and her 
criticism of English law, met with bitter dis- 
approval. One of the characters pronounces 
a panegyric upon the greater prosperity and 
happiness that has come to the French soldiers, 
farmers, and peasants, since they came to be- 
lieve that they were sharers in their own labours, 
and the hero of the book, writing from France 
to a friend in England, says: "I lament still 
more the disposition which too many English- 
men show to join in this unjust and infamous 
crusade, against the holy standard of freedom; 
and I blush for my country." In the same 
book, the author censures the penal laws of 
England, by which robbery to the amount of 
forty shillings is punishable with death; and 
criticises the delay of the courts in dealing 
justice. 

This criticism is expressed tamely, barely 
more than suggested, when compared with the 
vigorous attacks which Dickens made in the 



Charlotte Smith 7 7 

next century on English law and the slow action 
of justice in the famous "Circumlocution Office." 
Dickens wrote with such vigour that he brought 
about a reform. A modern reader finds Desmond 
earnest and sincere, but tame to the point of 
dulness. It seems strange how the Tory party 
could see in this book a menace to the Brit- 
ish constitution. But a writer in the Monthly 
Review for December, 1792, advocated her cause. 
"She is very justly of opinion," he writes, 
"that the great events that are passing in the 
world are no less interesting to women than 
to men, and that, in her solicitude to discharge 
the domestic duties, a woman ought not to 
forget that, in common with her father and 
husband, her brothers and sons, she is a citizen." 
The publication of The Old Manor House in 
the following year won back for her many of 
the friends that she had lost by Desmond. But in 
this work also the same love of liberty, the same 
indifference to social distinctions, occur. The 
hero of The Old Manor House joins the English 
army, and is sent to fight against the Americans; 
in the many reflections upon this conflict, the 
author shows that her sympathies are with the 
colonists. The father of the hero had married a 
young woman who had nothing to recommend 
her but "beauty, simplicity, and goodness." 
The hero himself falls in love with and marries 
a girl beneath him in rank, but he does not seem 



78 Woman's Work in Fiction 

to feel that he has done a generous thing, nor 
does the heroine show any gratitude for this 
honour. Each seems unconscious that their 
difference in rank should be a bar to their union, 
provided they do not offend old Mrs. Rayland, 
the owner of the manor. A great change had 
come over the novel since Pamela was over- 
powered with gratitude to her profligate master, 
Mr. B, for condescending to make her his wife. 

The revolutionary principles of Mrs. Smith's 
novels were soon forgotten, but two new 
elements were introduced by her that bore fruit 
in English fiction. Her great gift to the novel 
was the portrayal of refined, quiet, intellectual 
ladies, beside whom Evelina and Cecilia seem 
but school-girls. Her heroines may be poor, 
they may be of inferior rank, but they are 
always ladies of sensitive nature and cultivated 
manners, and are drawn with a feeling and 
tenderness which no novelist before her had 
reached. A contemporary said of Emmeline, 
"All is graceful, and pleasing to the sight, all, 
in short, is simple, femininely beautiful and 
chaste." This might be said of all the v/omen 
she has created. Old Mrs. Rayland, the central 
personage in her most popular novel, The Old 
Manor House, notwithstanding her exalted ideas 
of her own importance as a member of the 
Rayland family, and the arbitrary manner in 
which she compels all to conform to her old- 



Charlotte Smith 79 

fashioned notions, is always the high-born lady. 
We smile at her, but she never forfeits our 
respect. Scott said of her, "Old Mrs. Rayland 
is without a peer." 

Mrs. Smith's second gift to the novel was her 
charming descriptions of rural scenery. Nature 
had for a long time been banished from the arts. 
Wordsworth in one of his prefaces wrote: 

"Excepting The Nocturnal Reverie of Lady 
Winchelsea, and a passage or two in the Windsor 
Forest of Pope, the poetry of the period inter- 
vening between the publication of Paradise Lost 
and The Seasons does not contain a single new 
image of external nature; and scarcely presents 
a familiar one, from which it can be inferred 
that the eye of the Poet had been steadily fixed 
upon his object, much less that his feelings had 
urged him to work upon it in the spirit of 
genuine imagination." 

Fiction was as barren of scenery as poetry. 
None of the novelists were cognisant of the 
country scenes amid which their plots were laid, 
with the possible exception of Goldsmith. 
The Vicar of Wakefield has a rural setting, and 
there are references to the trees, the blackbirds, 
and the hayfields; but description is not intro- 
duced for the sake of its own beauty as in the 
novels of Charlotte Smith. In Ethelinda there 
are beautiful descriptions of the English Lakes, 
part of the scene being laid at Grasmere; 



80 Woman's Work in Fiction 

Celestina is in the romantic Provence; Desmond 
in Normandy; and in The Old Manor House 
we have the soft landscape of the south of 
England. 

In The Old Manor House she thus describes 
one of the paths that led from the gate of the 
park to Rayland Hall: 

"The other path, which in winter or in wet 
seasons was inconvenient, wound down a de- 
clivity, where furze and fern were shaded by 
a few old hawthorns and self-sown firs: out of 
the hill several streams were filtered, which, 
uniting at its foot, formed a large and clear 
pond of near twenty acres, fed by several im- 
perceptible currents from other eminences which 
sheltered that side of the park; and the bason 
between the hills and the higher parts of it 
being thus filled, the water found its way over 
a stony boundary, where it was passable by a 
foot bridge unless in time of floods; and from 
thence fell into a lower part of the ground, 
where it formed a considerable river; and, 
winding among willows and poplars for near 
a mile, again spread into a still larger lake, on the 
edge of which was a mill, and opposite, without 
the park paling, wild heaths, where the ground 
was sandy, broken, and irregular, still however 
marked by plantations made in it by the 
Rayland family." 

Every feature of the landscape is brought 



Charlotte Smith 81 

distinctly before the eye. Such descriptions 
are not unusual now, but they were first used 
by Charlotte Smith. 

Even more realistic is the picture of a road 
in a part of the New Forest near Christchurch : 

" It was a deep, hollow road, only wide enough 
for waggons, and was in some places shaded by 
hazel and other brush wood; in others, by old 
beech and oaks, whose roots wreathed about the 
bank, intermingled with ivy, holly, and ever- 
green fern, almost the only plants that appeared 
in a state of vegetation, unless the pale and 
sallow mistletoe, which here and there partially 
tinted with faint green the old trees above 
them. 

"Everything was perfectly still around; even 
the robin, solitary songster of the frozen woods, 
had ceased his faint vespers to the setting sun, 
and hardly a breath of air agitated the leafless 
branches. This dead silence was interrupted by 
no sound but the slow progress of his horse, as the 
hollow ground beneath his feet sounded as if he 
trod on vaults. There was in the scene, and in 
this dull pause of nature, a solemnity not un- 
pleasant to Orlando, in his present disposition 
of mind." 

In 1842, Miss Mitford wrote to Miss Barrett: 
"Charlotte Smith's works, with all their faults, 
have yet a love of external nature, and a power 

6 



82 Woman's Work in Fiction 

of describing it, which I never take a spring walk 
without feeling." And again she wrote to a 
friend referring to Mrs. Smith, "Except that 
they want cheerfulness, nothing can exceed the 
beauty of the style." 

The life and writings of Mrs. Inchbald had 
some things in common with the life and writings 
of Mrs. Smith. Both were obliged to write to 
support themselves as well as those dependent 
upon them. Both had seen many phases of 
human nature, and both viewed with scorn the 
pretensions of the rich and beheld with pity the 
sorrows of the poor. Both were champions of 
social and political equality. Mrs. Inchbald, 
however, was an actress and a successful play- 
wright, hence her novels are the more dramatic, 
but they lack the beautiful rural setting which 
gives a poetic atmosphere to the writings of 
Charlotte Smith. 

A Simple Story, the first of Mrs. Inchbald's 
two novels, has been called the precursor of Jane 
Eyre. It is the first novel in which we are more 
interested in what is felt than in what actually 
happens. Mr. Dorriforth, a Catholic priest, and 
Miss Milner, his ward, fall in love with each 
other, and we watch this hidden passion, which 
preys upon the health of both. He is horrified 
that he has broken his vows; she is mortified 
that she loves a man who, she believes, neither 



Mrs. Inchbald 83 

can nor does return her feeling for him. When 
he is released from his vow, it is the emotion, 
not external happenings, that holds the interest. 
The first part of the story is brought to a close 
with the marriage of Mr. Dorriforth, now Lord 
Elmwood, and Miss Milner. 

Seventeen years elapse between the two 
halves of the novel. During this time trouble 
has come between them and they have separated. 
The character of each has undergone a change. 
Traits of disposition that were first but lightly 
observed have been intensified with years. 
Mrs. Inchbald writes of the hero: "Dorriforth, 
the pious, the good, the tender Dorriforth, is 
become a hard-hearted tyrant; the compas- 
sionate, the feeling, the just Lord Elmwood, 
an example of implacable rigour and justice." 
His friend Sandford has also changed with the 
years, but he has been softened, not hardened 
by them — "the reprover, the enemy of the 
vain, the idle, and the wicked, but the friend 
and comforter of the forlorn and miserable." 

The story of Dorriforth gives unity to the 
two parts of the novel. The conflict between his 
love and his anger holds the reader in suspense 
until the conclusion. The characters of eigh- 
teenth-century fiction were actuated by but a 
small number of motives. In nearly all the 
novels the men were either generous and free 
or stingy and hypocritical; the women were 



84 Woman's Work in Fiction 

either virtuous and winsome, or immoral and 
brazen. Mrs. Inchbald possessed, only in a 
less degree, George Eliot's power of character- 
analysis; she observed minor qualities, and 
she was as unflinching in following the develop- 
ment of evil traits to a tragic conclusion as was 
the author of Adam Bede. 

In The Gentleman's Magazine for March, 
1 791, some one wrote of A Simple Story: 

"She has struck out a path entirely her own. 
She has disdained to follow the steps of her 
predecessors, and to construct a new novel, 
as is too commonly done, out of the scraps and 
fragments of earlier inventors. Her principal 
character, the Roman Catholic lord, is perfectly 
new: and she has conducted him, through a 
series of surprising well-contrasted adventures, 
with an uniformity of character and truth of 
description that have rarely been surpassed." 

There is, however, one hackneyed scene. A 
young girl is seized, thrust into a chariot, and 
carried at full speed to a lonely place. There 
is hardly an early novel where this bald incident 
is not worked up into one or more chapters, with 
variations to suit the convenience of the plot. 
It was as much a part of the stock in trade of 
the novelist of the eighteenth century as a 
family quarrel is of the twentieth. With this 
exception, A Simple Story is new in its plot, 
incidents, characters, and mode of treatment. 



Mrs. Inchbald 85 

Emotion did not play so important a part in a 
novel again until Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane 
Eyre. 

Mrs. Inchbald's only other novel, Nature and 
Art, shows the artificialities of society. Two 
cousins, William and Henry, are contrasted. 
William is the son of a dean. Henry's father 
went to Africa to live, whence he sent his son 
to his rich uncle to be educated. Henry fails 
to comprehend the society in which he finds 
himself placed, and cannot understand that 
there should be any poor people. 

" 'Why, here is provision enough for all the 
people,' said Henry; 'why should they want? 
why do not they go and take some of these 
things?' 

" 'They must not,' said the dean, 'unless they 
were their own.' 

"'What, Uncle! Does no part of the earth, 
nor anything which the earth produces, belong 
to the poor?' " 

His uncle fails to answer this question to his 
nephew's satisfaction. 

The vices and the fawning duplicity of William 
are contrasted with the virtues and independent 
spirit of Henry. 

" 'I know I am called proud/ one day said 
William to Henry. 

'"Dear Cousin,' replied Henry, 'it must be 
only then by those who do not know you; for 



86 Woman's Work in Fiction 

to me you appear the humblest creature in the 
world.' 

" 'Do you really think so?' 

"'I am certain of it ; or would you always give 
up your opinion to that of persons in a superior 
state, however inferior in their understanding? 
... I have more pride than you, for I will 
never stoop to act or to speak contrary to my 
feelings.' " 

William rises to eminence, in time becoming 
a judge. Henry, who is always virtuous, can 
obtain no preferment. This contrast in the two 
cousins is not so overdrawn as at first appears. 
William represents the aristocracy of the old 
world; Henry, the free representative of a new 
country. 

A tragic story runs through the novel, which 
becomes intensely dramatic at the point where 
William puts on his black cap to pronounce sen- 
tence on the girl whom he had ruined years 
before. He does not recognise her; but she, 
who had loved him through the years, becomes 
insane, not at the thought of death, but that 
he should be the one to pronounce the sentence. 
It is doubtful if any novelist before Scott had 
produced so thrilling a situation, a situation 
which grew naturally out of the plot, and the 
anguish of the poor unfortunate Agnes has the 
realism of Thomas Hardy or Tolstoi. 

Only by reading these old novels can one 



Mrs. Inchbald 87 

comprehend the change produced in England 
by the next half-century. The teachings of Mrs. 
Charlotte Smith and Mrs. Inchbald were declared 
dangerous to the state. That they taught disre- 
spect for authority, was one of the many charges 
brought against them. Yet with what ladylike 
reserve they advance views which a later gen- 
eration applauded when boldly proclaimed by 
Dickens, Thackeray, and Disraeli! 



CHAPTER VI 

Clara Reeve. Ann Radcliffe. 
Harriet and Sophia Lee 

THE novel of the mysterious and the super- 
natural did not appear in modem lit- 
erature until Horace Walpole wrote The Castle 
of Otranto in 1764, during the decade that was 
dominated by the realism of Smollett and Sterne. 
The author says it was an attempt to blend two 
kinds of romance, the ancient, which was all im- 
probable, and the modern, which was a realis- 
tic copy of nature. The machinery of this 
novel is clumsy. An enormous helmet and a 
huge sword are the means by which an ancestor 
of Otranto, long since dead, restores the castle 
to a seeming peasant, who proves to be the 
rightful heir. 

This book produced no imitators until 1777, 
when Clara Reeve wrote The Old English 
Baron, which was plainly suggested by Walpole's 
novel, but is more delicate in the treatment 
of its ghostly visitants. Here, as in The Castle 
88 



Clara Reeve 89 

of Otranto, the rightful heir has been brought up 
a peasant, ignorant of his high birth. Again his 
ancestors, supposedly dead and gone, bring him 
into his own. One night he is made to sleep in 
the haunted part of the castle, where his parents 
reveal to him in a dream things which he is 
later able to prove legally. He learns the truth 
about his birth, comes into his estate, and wins 
the lady of his heart. When he returns to the 
castle as its master, all the doors fly open 
through the agency of unseen hands to welcome 
their feudal lord. 

The characters of both these novels are with- 
out interest, and the mysterious element fails 
to produce the slightest creepy thrill. 

Twelve years passed before Walpole's novel 
found another imitator in Mrs. Ann RadclifTe, 
who so far excelled her two predecessors that 
she has been called the founder of the Gothic 
romance, and in this field she remains without 
a peer. In her first novel, The Castles of Athlin 
and Dunbayne, as in The Old English Baron by 
Clara Reeve, a peasant renowned for his courage 
and virtue loves and is beloved by a lady of rank. 
A strawberry mark on his arm proves that he is 
the Baron Malcolm and owner of the castle of 
Dunbayne, at which juncture amid great re- 
joicings the story ends. 

The characters and the style foreshadow Mrs. 



9° 



Woman's Work in Fiction 



Radcliffe's later work. The usurping Baron 
of Dunbayne, who has imprisoned in his castle 
the women who might oppose his ambition; 
the two melancholy widows; their gentle and 
pensive daughters; their brave, loyal, and 
virtuous sons in love respectively with the 
two daughters; the Count Santmorin, bold and 
passionate, who endeavours by force to carry 
off the woman he loves — these are types that 
Mrs. Radcliffe repeatedly developed until in 
her later novels they became real men and 
women with strong conflicting emotions. 

But superior to all her other powers is her 
ability to awaken a feeling of the presence of 
the supernatural. The castle of Dunbayne has 
secret doors and subterranean passages. The 
mysterious sound, as of a lute, is wafted on the 
air from an unknown source. Alleyn, in en- 
deavouring to escape through a secret passage, 
stumbles over something in the dark, and, on 
stooping to learn what it is, finds the cold 
hand of a corpse in his grasp. This dead man 
has nothing to do with the story, but is intro- 
duced merely to make the reader shudder, which 
Mrs. Radcliffe never fails to do, even after we 
have learned all the secrets of her art. We learn 
later in the book how the corpse happened to be 
left here unburied; for in that day of intense 
realism, half-way between the ancient belief 
in ghosts and the modern interest in mental 



Ann Radcliffe 



9i 



suggestion, every occurrence outside the known 
laws of physics was greeted with a cynical 
smile. But, although Mrs. Radcliffe always 
explains the mystery in her books, we hold 
our breath whenever she designs that we 
shall. 

The Sicilian Romance, The Romance of the 
Forest, The Mysteries of Udolpho, and The 
Italian were written and published during the 
next seven years and each one shows a marked 
artistic advance over its predecessor. With the 
opening paragraph of each, we are carried at 
once into the land of the unreal, into regions of 
poetry rather than of prose. Rugged mountains 
with their concealed valleys, whispering forests 
which the eye cannot penetrate, Gothic ruins 
with vaulted chambers and subterranean pas- 
sages, are the scenes of her stories; while event 
after event of her complicated plot happens 
either just as the mists of evening are obscuring 
the sun, or while the moonlight is throwing 
fantastic shadows over the landscape. It is 
an atmosphere of mystery in which one feels 
the weird presence of the supernatural. This 
is heightened by the ghostly suggestions she 
brings to the mind, as incorporeal as spirits, 
A low hurried breathing in the dark, lights 
flashing out from unexpected places, forms 
gliding noiselessly along the dark corridors, a 
word of warning from an unseen source, cause 



92 Woman's Work in Fiction 

the reader to wait with hushed attention for the 
unfolding of the mystery. 

Sometimes the solution is trivial. The reader 
and the inmates of Udolpho are held in suspense 
chapter after chapter by some terrible appear- 
ance behind a black veil. When Emily ventures 
to draw the curtain, she drops senseless to the 
ground. But this appearance turns out to be 
merely a wax effigy placed there by chance. 
Often the explanation is more satisfactory. 
The disappearance of Ludovico during the 
night from the haunted chamber where he was 
watching in hopes of meeting the spirits that 
infested it, makes the most sceptical believe for 
a time in the reality of the ghostly visitants ; and 
his reappearance at the close of the book, the 
slave of pirates who had found a secret passage 
leading from the sea to this room, and had used 
it as a place of rendezvous, is declared by Sir 
Walter Scott to meet all the requirements of 
romance. 

But by a series of strange coincidences and 
dreams Mrs. Radcliffe still makes us feel that 
the destiny of her characters is shaped by an un- 
seen power. Adeline is led by chance to the 
very ruin where her unknown father had been 
murdered years before. She sees in dreams all 
the incidents of the deed, and a manuscript 
he had written while in the power of his ene- 
mies falls into her hands. Again by chance she 



Ann Radcliffe 



93 



finds an asylum in the home of a clergyman, 
Arnaud La Luc, who proves to be the father 
of her lover, Theodore Peyrou. It seems to be 
by the interposition of Providence that Ellena 
finds her mother and is recognised by her father. 
So in every tale we are made aware of powers 
not mortal shaping human destiny. 

Mrs. Radcliffe adds to this consciousness of 
the presence of the supernatural by another, per- 
haps more legitimate, method. She felt what 
Wordsworth expressed in T intern Abbey, writ- 
ten the year after her last novel was published: 

And I have felt 
A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; 
A motion and a spirit, that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things. 

Mrs. Radcliffe seldom loses her feeling for na- 
ture, and has a strong sense of the effect of 
environment on her characters. Julia, when 
in doubt about the fate of Hippolitus, often 
walked in the evening under the shade of 
the high trees that environed the abbey. "The 
dewy coolness of the air refreshed her. The 
innumerable roseate tints which the parting 



94 Woman's Work in Fiction 

sun-beams reflected on the rocks above, and the 
fine vermil glow diffused over the romantic 
scene beneath, softly fading from the eye as the 
night shades fell, excited sensations of a sweet 
and tranquil nature, and soothed her into a 
temporary forgetfulness of her sorrow." As the 
happy lovers, Vivaldi and Ellena, are gliding 
along the Bay of Naples, they hear from the 
shore the voices of the vine-dressers, as they 
repose after the labours of the day, and catch 
the strains of music from fishermen who are 
dancing on the margin of the sea. 

Sometimes nature is prophetic. The whole 
description of the castle of Udolpho, when 
Emily first beholds it, is symbolical of the 
sufferings she is to endure there: "As she 
gazed, the light died away on its walls, leaving 
a melancholy purple tint, which spread deeper 
and deeper, as the thin vapour crept up the 
mountain, while the battlements above were still 
tipped with splendour. From these, too, the 
rays soon faded, and the whole edifice was 
invested with the solemn duskiness of evening. 
Silent, lonely, and sublime it seemed to stand 
the sovereign of the scene, and to frown defiance 
on all who dared invade its solitary reign." 
When Emily is happy in the peasant's home in 
the valley below, she lingers at the casement 
after the sun has set: "But a clear moonlight 
that succeeded gave to the landscape what time 



Ann Radcliffe 



95 



gives to the scenes of past life, when it softens 
all their harsh features, and throws over the 
whole the mellowing shade of distant contempla- 
tion." It is this feeling for nature as a constant 
presence in daily life, now elating the mind with 
joy, now awakening a sense of foreboding or in- 
spiring terror, and again soothing the mind to 
repose, that gives to her books a permanent hold 
upon the imagination and marks their author as 
a woman of genius. 

In her response to nature, she belongs to the 
Lake School. Scott said of her: "Mrs. Rad- 
cliffe has a title to be considered as the first 
poetess of romantic fiction, that is, if actual 
rhythm shall not be deemed essential to poetry." 
Mrs. Smith describes nature as we all know it, 
as it appears on the canvasses of Constable and 
Wilson. Mrs. Radcliffe's descriptions of ideal 
and romantic nature have earned for her the 
name of the English Salvator Rosa. 

Mrs. Radcliffe's characters are not without 
interest, although they are often mere types. 
All her heroes and heroines are ladies and 
gentlemen of native courtesy, superior edu- 
cation, and accomplishments. In The Mys- 
teries of Udolpho she has set forth the education 
which St. Aubert gave to his daughter, Emily: 
"St. Aubert cultivated her understanding with 
the most scrupulous care. He gave her a general 
view of the sciences, and an exact acquaintance 



96 Woman's Work in Fiction 

with every part of elegant literature. He taught 
her Latin and English, chiefly that she might 
understand the sublimity of their best poets. 
She discovered in her early years a taste for 
works of genius; and it was St. Aubert's princi- 
ple, as well as his inclination, to promote every 
innocent means of happiness. ' A well informed 
mind,' he would say, 'is the best security 
against the contagion of vice and folly.' " 

In all their circumstances her characters are 
well-bred. This type has been nearly lost in lit- 
erature, due, perhaps, to the minuter study of 
manners and the analysis of character. When an 
author surveys his ladies and gentlemen through 
a reading-glass, and points the finger at their 
oddities and pries into their inmost secrets, even 
the Chesterfields become awkward and clownish. 
But Mrs. Radcliffe, like Mrs. Smith, is a true 
gentlewoman, and speaks of her characters with 
the delicate respect of true gentility. Julia, 
Adeline, Emily, and Ellena, the heroines of four 
of her books, love nature, and while away the 
melancholy hours by playing on the lute or 
writing poetry, and are, moreover, well qualified 
to have charge of a baronial castle and its 
dependencies. Her heroes are worthy of her 
heroines. As they are generally seen in the 
presence of ladies, if they have vices there is no 
occasion for their display. 

It is only in the characters of her villains 



Ann Radcliffe 97 

that good and evil are intertwined, and she 
awakens our sympathy for them equally with 
our horror. Monsieur La Motte, a weak man 
in the power of an unscrupulous one, is the best 
drawn character in The Romance of the Forest. 
He has taken Adeline under his protection 
and has been as a father to her. But before 
this he had committed a crime which has placed 
his life in the hands of a powerful marquis. To 
free himself he consents to surrender Adeline 
to the marquis, who has become enamoured 
of her beauty, hoping by the sacrifice of her 
honour to save his own life. He is agitated in 
the presence of Adeline, and trembles at the 
approach of any stranger. Scott said of him, 
"He is the exact picture of the needy man who 
has seen better days." 

In The Italian, Schedoni, a monk of the order 
of Black Penitents for whom the novel is named, 
is guilty of the most atrocious crimes in order 
that he may further his own ambition, but he is 
not devoid of natural feeling. Scott says the 
scene in which he "is in the act of raising his 
arm to murder his sleeping victim, and discovers 
her to be his own child, is of a new, grand, and 
powerful character; and the horrors of the 
wretch who, on the brink of murder, has just 
escaped from committing a crime of yet more 
exaggerated horror, constitute the strongest 
painting which has been produced by Mrs. 



98 Woman's Work in Fiction 

Radcliffe's pencil, and form a crisis well fitted 
to be actually embodied on canvas by some 
great master." 

Every book has one or more gloomy, deep- 
plotting villains. But all the people of rank 
bear unmistakable marks of their nobility, even 
when their natures have become depraved by 
crime. In this she is the equal of Scott. 

In every ruined abbey and castle there is a 
servant who brings in a comic element and re- 
lieves the strained feelings. Peter, Annette, and 
Paulo are all faithful but garrulous, and often 
bring disaster upon their masters by overzeal 
in their service. 

When Vivaldi, the hero of The Italian, is 
brought before the tribunal of the inquisition, 
his faithful servant, Paulo, rails bitterly at the 
treatment his master has received. Vivaldi, 
well knowing the danger which they both incur 
by too free speech, bids him speak in a whisper: 

"'A whisper,' shouted Paulo, ' I scorn to speak 
in a whisper. I will speak so loud that every 
word I say shall ring in the ears of all those 
old black devils on the benches yonder, ay, 
and those on that mountebank stage, too, that 
sit there looking so grim and angry, as if they 
longed to tear us in pieces. They — ' 

" ' Silence,' said Vivaldi with emphasis. 'Paulo, 
I command you to be silent.' 

"'They shall know a bit of my mind,' contin- 



Ann Radcliffe 99 

ued Paulo, without noticing Vivaldi. ' I will tell 
them what they have to expect from all their 
cruel usage of my poor master. Where do 
they expect to go to when they die, I wonder? 
Though for that matter, they can scarcely go 
to a worse place than that they are in already, 
and I suppose it is knowing that which makes 
them not afraid of being ever so wicked. They 
shall hear a little plain truth for once in their 
lives, however; they shall hear — ' " 

But by this time Paulo is dragged from the 
room. 

The plots of all Mrs. Radcliffe's novels are 
complicated. A whole skein is knotted and 
must be unravelled thread by thread. The 
Mysteries of Udolpho is the most involved. 
Characters are introduced that are for a time 
apparently forgotten; one sub-plot appears 
within another, but at the end each is found 
necessary to the whole. 

The Italian is simpler than the others: the 
plot is less involved, and there are many strong 
situations. The opening sentence at once 
arouses the interests of the reader: "Within 
the shade of the portico, a person with folded 
arms, and eyes directed towards the ground, 
was pacing behind the pillars the whole ex- 
tent of the pavement, and was apparently so 
engaged by his own thoughts as not to ob- 
serve that strangers were approaching. He 



ioo Woman's Work in Fiction 

turned, however, suddenly, as if startled by 
the sound of steps, and then, without fur- 
ther pausing, glided to a door that opened 
into the church, and disappeared." Another 
scene in which the Marchesa Vivaldi and Sche- 
doni are plotting the death of Ellena, is justly 
famous. The former is actuated by the desire 
to prevent her son's marriage to a woman of 
inferior rank; the latter hopes that he may gain 
an influence over the powerful Marchesa that 
will lead to his promotion in the church. Their 
conference, which takes place in the choir of 
the convent of San Nicolo, is broken in upon 
by the faint sound of the organ followed by 
slow voices chanting the first requiem for the 
dead. 

The Italian is generally considered the strong- 
est of Mrs. Radcliffe's novels. It was pub- 
lished in 1797, and was as enthusiastically 
received as were its predecessors, but for some 
reason it was the last book Mrs. Radclifle pub- 
lished. Neither the fame it brought her, nor 
the eight hundred pounds she received for it 
from her publishers, tempted its author from 
her life of retirement. Publicity was distaste- 
ful to her. At the age of thirty-four, at an age 
when many novelists had written nothing, she 
ceased from writing, and spent the rest of her 
years either in travel or in the seclusion of her 
own home. 



Ann Radcliffe 101 

The novel at this time was not considered 
seriously as a work of art, and Mrs. RadclifTe 
may have considered that she was but trifling 
with time by employing her pen in that way. 
In looking over the book reviews in The Gentle- 
men's Magazine for the years from 1790 to 1800, 
it is significant that, while column after column 
is spent in lavish praise of a book of medicine 
or science which the next generation proved 
to be false, and of poetry that had no merit 
except that its feet could be counted, seldom 
is a novel reviewed in its pages. The Mysteries 
of Udolpho was criticised for its lengthy de- 
scriptions, and The Italian was ignored. 

The direct influence of these novels on the 
literature of the nineteenth century cannot 
be estimated. Mrs. Radcliffe's influence upon 
her contemporaries can be more easily traced. 
The year after the publication of The Mysteries 
of Udolpho Lewis wrote The Monk. This has 
all the horrors but none of the refined delicacy 
of Mrs. Radcliffe's work. Robert Charles Maturin 
borrowed many suggestions from her, and the 
gentle satire of Northanger Abbey could never 
have been written if Jane Austen had not her- 
self come under the influence of The Romance of 
the Forest. 

But her greatest influence was upon Scott. 
The four great realistic novelists of the eighteenth 
century, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett and 



102 Woman's Work in Fiction 

Sterne whose influence can be so often traced 
in Thackeray and Dickens, seem never to have 
touched the responsive nature of Scott. He 
edited their works and often spoke in their 
praise, but that which was deepest and truest in 
him, which gave birth to his poetry and his 
novels, seems never to have been aware of their 
existence. Mrs. Radcliffe and Maria Edgewood 
were his most powerful teachers. 

Andrew Lang in the introduction to Rob Roy 
in the Border edition of the Waverley Novels 
calls attention to the fact that Waverley, Guy 
Mannering, Lovel of The Antiquary, and Frank 
Osbaldistone were all poets. Not only these 
men, but others, as Edward Glendinning and 
Edgar Ravenswood, bear a strong family 
resemblance to Theodore Peyrou, Valancourt, 
and Vivaldi, as well as to some of the other less 
important male characters in Mrs. Radcliffe's 
novels. Scott's men stand forth more clearly 
drawn, while Mrs. Radcliffe's are often but dimly 
outlined. Ellen Douglas, the daughter of an ex- 
iled family; the melancholy Flora Maclvor, who 
whiled away her hours by translating High- 
land poetry into English ; Mary Avenel, dwelling 
in a remote castle, are all refined, educated 
gentlewomen such as Mrs. Smith and Mrs. 
Radcliffe delighted in, and are placed in situa- 
tions similar to those in which Julia, Adeline, 
and Emily are found. 



Ann Radcliffe 103 

But the heroines of Mrs. Smith and Mrs. 
Radcliffe have a quality which not even Scott 
has been able to give to his women. It is 
expressed by a word often used during the reign 
of the Georges, but since gone out of fashion. 
They were women of fine sensibilities. Johnson 
defines this as quickness of feeling, and it has 
been used to mean a quickness of perception 
of the soul as distinguished from the intellect. 
The sensibilities of women may not be finer 
than those of men, but they respond to a greater 
variety of emotions. This gives to them a certain 
evanescent quality which we find in Elizabeth 
Bennet, Jane Eyre, Maggie Tulliver, Romola, the 
portraits of Madame Le Brun and Angelica 
Kauffman, and the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning. This quality men have almost never 
grasped whether working with the pen or the 
brush. Rosalind, Juliet, Viola, Beatrice, all pos- 
sess it; and in a less degree, Diana of the Cross- 
ways is true to her sex in this respect. But the 
features of nearly every famous Madonna, no 
matter how skilful the artist that painted her, 
are stiff and wooden when looked at from this 
point of view, and Scott's heroines, with the 
possible exception of Jeanie Deans, are immobile 
when compared with woman as portrayed by 
many an inferior artist of her own sex. 

Scott's complicated plots and his constant 
introduction of characters who are surrounded 



104 Woman's Work in Fiction 

by mystery or are living in disguise again sug- 
gest Mrs. Radcliffe. Again and again he selected 
the same scenes that had appealed to her, and 
in his earlier novels and poems he filled them in 
with the same details which she had chosen. 
Perhaps it is due to her influence that all the 
hills of Scotland, as some critic has observed, 
become mountains when he touches them: 
"The sun was nearly set behind the distant 
mountain of Liddesdale" was the beginning 
of an early romance to have been entitled 
Thomas the Rhymer. Knockwinnock Bay in 
The Antiquary is first seen at sunset, and 
it is night when Guy Mannering arrives at 
Elian gowan Castle. Melrose is described by 
moonlight. The sun as it sets in the Trossachs 
brings to the mind of Scott the very outlines 
and colours which Mrs. Radcliffe had used in 
giving the first appearance of Udolpho, a scene 
which Scott has highly praised; while these 
famous lines of James Fit z- James have caught 
the very essence of one of her favourite 
spots : 

On this bold brow, a lordly tower; 

In that soft vale, a lady's bower; 

On yonder meadow, far away, 

The turrets of a cloister grey! 

How blithely might the bugle horn 

Chide, on the lake, the lingering mornl 

How sweet, at eve, the lover's lute 

Chime, when the groves were still and mute! 



Harriet and Sophia Lee 105 

And, when the midnight moon should lave 
Her forehead in the silver wave, 
How solemn on the ear would come 
The holy matin's distant hum. 

In his later works Scott is tediously prosaic 
in description, far inferior to Mrs. Radcliffe, 
and in the romantic description of scenery he 
never excels her. It would seem to be no mere 
chance that in his poetry and in his earlier nov- 
els he has so often struck the same key as did 
the author of The Mysteries of Udolpho. 

Two sisters, Harriet and Sophia Lee, were 
writing books and finding readers during the 
time of Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Inchbald, and Mrs. 
Radcliffe. In 1784, Sophia Lee published a 
three-volume novel, The Recess, a story of the 
time of Queen Elizabeth, in which Elizabeth, 
Mary Queen of Scots, and the earls Leicester, 
Norfolk, and Essex play important roles. The 
two heroines are unacknowledged daughters of 
Mary Queen of Scots and Norfolk, to whom 
she has been secretly married during her im- 
prisonment in England. Many other situations 
in the book are equally fictitious. 

The historical novels written in France during 
the reign of Louis XIV paid no heed to chro- 
nology, but men and women whom the author 
knew well were dressed in the garb of historical 
personages, and various periods of the past were 



106 Woman's Work in Fiction 

brought into the space of the story. The Re- 
cess was not a masquerade, but the plot and 
characters slightly picture the reign of Elizabeth. 
This was one of the first novels in which there 
was an attempt to represent a past age with 
something like accuracy. As this was one 
of the first historical novels, using the term 
in the modern sense, it had perhaps a right to be 
one of the poorest; for it is impossible to con- 
ceive three volumes of print in which there are 
fewer sentences that leave any impress on the 
mind than this once popular novel. 

Sophia Lee wrote other novels which are said 
to be worse than this; but in 1797 she and her 
sister Harriet, who had the greater imagina- 
tion, published The Canterbury Tales x Some of 
those written by Harriet are excellent. Ac- 
cording to the story a group of travellers have 
met at an inn in Canterbury, where they are 
delayed on account of a heavy fall of snow. 
To while away the weary hours of waiting, as 
they are gathered about the fire in true English 
fashion, they agree, as did the Canterbury pil- 
grims of long ago, that each one shall tell a story. 
But the pilgrims whom Chaucer accompanied 
to the shrine of Thomas a Becket are accurately 
described, and between the tales they discuss 
the stories and exchange lively banter in which 
the nature of each speaker is clearly revealed. 
In The Canterbury Tales there is little character- 



Harriet and Sophia Lee 107 

drawing. Any one of the stories might have 
been told by any one of the narrators, and before 
the conclusion the authors dropped this device. 

In the stories that are told the characters 
are weak, but the plots are interesting and 
many of them original and clever. These Tales 
represent the beginning of the modern short 
story. 

In a preface to a complete edition of the 
Tales published in 1832, Harriet Lee wrote: 

" Before I finally dismiss the subject, I think 
I may be permitted to observe that, when these 
volumes first appeared, a work bearing dis- 
tinctly the title of Tales, professedly adapted 
to different countries, and either abruptly com- 
mencing with, or breaking suddenly into, a sort 
of dramatic dialogue, was a novelty in the fiction 
of the day. Innumerable Tales of the same 
stamp, and adapted in the same manner to all 
classes and all countries, have since appeared; 
with many of which I presume not to compete 
in merit, though I think I may fairly claim 
priority of design and style. " - 

The Canterbury Tales were read and reread a 
long time after they were written. A critic in 
Blackwood's says of them: 

"They exhibit more of that species of in- 
vention which, as we have already remarked, 
was never common in English literature than 
any of the works of the first-rate novelists 



108 Woman's Work in Fiction 

we have named, with the single exception of 
Fielding. " 

The most famous story of the collection is 
Kruitzener, or the German's Tale. Part of the 
story is laid in Silesia during the Thirty Years' 
War. Frederick Kruitzener, a Bohemian, is 
the hero, if such a term may be used for so weak 
a man. In his youth he is thus described: 

"The splendour, therefore, which the united 
efforts of education, fortune, rank, and the 
merits of his progenitors threw around him, 
was early mistaken for a personal gift — a sort 
of emanation proceeding from the lustre of his 
own endowments, and for which, as he believed, 
he was indebted to nature, he resolved not to be 
accountable to man. ... He was distinguished! 
— he saw it — he felt it — he was persuaded he 
should ever be so ; and while yet a youth in the 
house of his father — dependent on his paternal 
affection, and entitled to demand credit of the 
world merely for what he was to be — he secretly 
looked down on that world as made only for 
him." 

The tale traces the troubles which Kruitzener 
brings upon himself, his misery and his death. 
It belongs to romantic literature; the mountain 
scenes, a palace with secret doors, a secret gal- 
lery, a false friend, a mysterious murder, all these 
remind us of Mrs. Radcliffe's novels, but the 
story does not possess her power or her poetic 



Harriet and Sophia Lee 109 

charm. Ernest Hartley Coleridge said of this 
tale: "But the motif — a son predestined to evil 
by the weakness and sensuality of his father, a 
father's punishment for his want of rectitude 
by the passionate criminality of his son, is the 
very key-note of tragedy. " 

Byron read this story when he was about 
fourteen, and it affected him powerfully. By 
a strange coincidence Kruitzener bears a strong 
resemblance to Lord Byron himself. He was 
proud and melancholy, and, while he led a life 
of pleasure, his spirits were always wrapped in 
gloom. "It made a deep impression on me," 
writes Byron, " and may, indeed, be said to 
contain the germ of much that I have since 
written." In 182 1, he dramatised it under the 
title of Werner, or the Inheritance. The play 
follows the novel closely both in plot and con- 
versation. An editor of Byron's works wrote 
of it: "There is not one incident in his play, 
not even the most trivial, that is not in Miss 
Lee's novel. And then as to the characters — 
not only is every one of them to be found in 
Kruitzener, but every one is there more fully 
and powerfully developed." 

The Landlady's Tale is far superior to all 
others in the collection, if judged by present- 
day standards. This story of sin and its pun- 
ishment reminds one in its moral earnestness 
of George Eliot. Mr. Mandeville had brought 



no Woman's Work in Fiction 

ruin upon a poor girl, Mary Lawson, whose own 
child died, when she became the wet nurse of 
Robert, Mr. Mandeville's legitimate son and 
heir. Mary grew to love the boy, but, when 
the father threatened to expose her character 
unless she would continue to be his mistress, 
she ran away, taking the infant with her. She 
became a servant in a lodging-house in Wey- 
mouth, where she lived for fifteen years, re- 
spected and beloved. At the end of that time, 
Mr. Mandeville came to the house as a lodger, 
where he neither recognised Mary nor knew his 
son. But he disliked Robert, and paid no heed 
to the fact that one of his own servants was 
leading the boy into evil ways. When Robert 
was accused of a crime which his own servant 
had committed, he saw him sent to prison 
and later transported with indifference. The 
grief of the father when he learned that Robert 
was his own child was most poignant, and his 
unavailing efforts to save him are vividly told. 
He is left bowed with grief, for he suffers under 
the double penalty of "a reproachful world and 
a reproaching conscience." 



CHAPTER VII 

Maria Edgeworth. Lady Morgan 

' ' f\ /I Y real name is Thady Quirk, though in 
1 V 1 the family I have always been known 
by no other than ' honest Thady'; afterward, in 
the time of Sir Murtagh, diseased, I remember 
to hear them calling me ' old Thady, ' and now 
I 'm come to ' poor Thady. ' " Thus the faithful 
servant of the Rackrent family introduces him- 
self, before relating the history of the lords of 
the castle, where he and his had lived rent-free 
time out of mind. And what consummate art 
Maria Edgeworth showed in her first novel, 
Castle Rackrent, in letting "poor Thady" ram- 
ble with all the garrulity of old age. To him, 
who had never been farther than a day's tramp 
from the castle, there was nothing in the world's 
history but it and its owners. No servant but 
an Irish servant could have told the story as he 
did, judging the characters of his masters with 
shrewd wit and relating their worst failings 
with a "God bless them." 

And where out of Ireland could Thady have 
found such masters, ready to spend all they 
in 



ii2 Woman's Work in Fiction 

had and another man's too, happy and free, 
and dying as merrily as they had lived ! There 
was Sir Patrick, who, as Thady tells us, " could 
sit out the best man in Ireland, let alone the 
three kingdoms"; Sir Kit, who married a Jewess 
for her money; and Sir Condy, who signed away 
the estate rather than be bothered to look into 
his steward's accounts, and then feigned that he 
was dead that he might hear what his friends 
said of him at the wake. But he soon came 
to life, and a merry time they had of it. " But to 
my mind," says Thady, " Sir Condy was rather 
upon the sad order in the midst of it all, not 
finding there was such a great talk about him- 
self after his death, as he had expected to hear." 
But Thady loved his master, and it is with 
genuine grief that he records his ultimate death, 
and with simple and unconscious wit he adds, 
"He had but a very poor funeral after all." 

In The Absentee, the manners and customs 
of the Irish peasants are more broadly delin- 
eated than in Castle Rackrent. The Absentee 
was written to call the attention of the Irish 
landlords who were living in England to the 
wretched condition of their tenants left in 
the power of unscrupulous stewards. Lord 
Colambre, the son of Lord Clonbrony, an ab- 
sentee, visits his father's estates, which he has 
not seen for many years, in disguise, and goes 
among the peasants, many of whom are in 



Maria Edgeworth 113 

abject poverty. But the quick generosity of 
the nation speaks in the poor Widow O 'Neil's 
"Kindly welcome, sir," with which she opens 
the door to the unknown lord, and its enthusi- 
astic loyalty in the joyful acclamations of the 
peasants when he reveals himself to them, — 
a scene which Macaulay has pronounced the 
finest in literature since the twenty-second book 
of the Odyssey. 

Ennui is another of her stories of Irish life, in 
which the supposed Earl of Glenthorn, after a 
long residence in England, returns to his Irish 
estates. The heroine of this tale is the old 
nurse, Ellinor O'Donoghoe. As the nurses of 
many stories are said to have done, she had sub- 
stituted her own child for the rightful heir, and 
was frantic with joy when she saw him the 
master of Glenthorn Castle. Her devotion to 
the earl is pathetic, and her secret fears of 
the deception she had practised on the old 
earl may have prompted her strange speech 
that, if it pleased God, she would like to die on 
Christmas Day, of all days, "because the gates 
of heaven will be open all that day; and who 
knows but a body might slip in unbeknownst?" 
Ellinor is a woman of many virtues and many 
failings, but she is always pure Celt. 

How well contrasted are the two cousins, 
friends of Ormond, Sir Ulick O' Shane, a wily 
politician and a member of Parliament, and Mr. 



ii4 Woman's Work in Fiction 

Cornelius O'Shane, King of the Black Islands, 
called by his dependents King Corny. The 
latter, bluff, generous, brave, open as the day, 
is yet a match for his crafty kinsman. Sir 
Ulick's visit to King Corny is a masterpiece. 
He has a purpose in his visit and a secret to 
guard, which King Corny is watching to dis- 
cover. Sir Ulick has been bantering his kins- 
man on the old-fashioned customs observed on 
his estate and ridicules his method of ploughing: 

" ' Your team, I see, is worthy of your tackle, ' 
pursued Sir Ulick. 'A mule, a bull, and two 
lean horses. I pity the foremost poor devil 
of a horse, who must starve in the midst of 
plenty, while the horse, bull, and even mule, in 
a string behind him, are all plucking and mun- 
ging away at their hay ropes.' 

"Cornelius joined in Sir Ulick's laugh, which 
shortened its duration. 

" ' Tis comical ploughing, I grant,' said he, 
'but still, to my fancy, anything 's better and 
more profitable nor the tragi-comic ploughing 
you practise every sason in Dublin.' 

" 'I?' said Sir Ulick. 

"'Ay, you and all your courtiers, ploughing 
the half-acre, continually pacing up and down 
that castle-yard, while you 're waiting in atten- 
dance there. Every one to his own taste, but, 

" ' If there 's a man on earth I hate, 
Attendance and dependence be his fate.' " 



Maria Edgeworth 115 

King Corny has been studying his diplomatic 
kinsman carefully to learn his secret, until the 
wily politician, by unnecessary caution in' guard- 
ing it, overreaches himself, when King Corny 
exclaims to himself: 

"Woodcocked! That he has, as I foresaw 
he would." 

While the trained diplomat murmurs as he 
takes his leave, "All 's safe." 

Native wit had got the better of artful 
cunning. 

And when Sir Ulick dies in disgrace, how 
pithy is the remark of one of the men, as he 
is filling in the grave: 

" There lies the making of an excellent gentle- 
man — but the cunning of his head spoiled the 
goodness of his heart." 

In the same book, how generous and how 
Irish is Moriarty, lying on the brink of death, 
as he thinks of Ormond, who had shot him in a 
fit of passion but bitterly repented his rash deed : 

" I 'd live through all, if possible, for his sake, 
let alone my mudther's, or shister's or my own — 
't would be too bad, after all the trouble he got 
these two nights, to be dying at last, and hant- 
ing him, maybe, whether I would or no." 

The quick kindness which so often twists 
an Irishman's tongue is humorously illustrated 
in the Essay on Irish Bulls, which Maria 
Edgeworth and her father wrote together. Mr. 



n6 Woman's Work in Fiction 

Phelim O'Mooney, disguised as Sir John Bull, ac- 
cepts his brother's wager that he cannot remain 
four days in England without the country of his 
birth being discovered eight times. Whenever 
his speech betrays him, it is the result of his 
emotions. When he sees Bourke, a pugilist 
of his own country, overcome by an English- 
man, he cries to him excitedly: "How are you, 
my gay fellow? Can you see at all with the 
eye that is knocked out?" A little later, in 
discussing a certain impost duty, he grows 
angry and exclaims: " If I had been the English 
minister, I would have laid the dog-tax upon 
cats." The humour of his situation increases 
to a climax, so that the fun never flags. Such 
stories as this in which the wit is simply spark- 
ling good-nature, with no attempt to use it as 
a weapon against frail humanity as did Fielding 
and Thackeray, or to produce a smile by exag- 
geration as did Dickens, but simply bubbling 
fun, as free from guile as the sun's laughter on 
Killarney, show that Miss Edge worth was a 
comedian of the first rank. Like all true come- 
dians, she is also strong in the pathetic, but it 
is the Irish pathos, in which there is ever a 
smile amid the tears. This is found in the story 
of the return of Lady Clonbrony to her own coun- 
try ; the fall of Castle Rackrent ; and the ruin by 
their sudden splendour of the family of Christy 
O'Donoghoe. 



Maria Edgeworth 117 

Whenever Miss Edgeworth writes of Ireland 
and its people, her pages glow with the inspira- 
tion of genius. There is no exaggeration, no 
caricature; all is told with simple truth. It 
has often been the fate of novelists whose aim 
has been to depict the manners and customs 
of a locality to win the ill-will of the obscure 
people they have brought into prominence. 
But not so with Maria Edgeworth. Her family, 
although originally English, had been settled 
for two hundred years in Ireland. She loved 
the country and always wrote of it with a loving 
pen. Before Castle Rackrent was written, Ire- 
land had been for many centuries an outcast 
in literature, known only for her blunders and 
bulls. But, as one of her characters says, "An 
Irish bull is always of the head, never of the 
heart." Even though her characters are humor- 
ous, they are never clowns. All the men have 
dignity, and all the women grace. She gave 
them a respectable place in literature. 

But her influence was felt outside of Ireland. 
Old Thady, in his garrulous description of the 
masters of Castle Rackrent, had introduced the 
first national novel, in which the avowed object 
is to represent traits of national character. 
Patriotic writers in other countries learned 
through her how to serve their own land, 
and she was one of the many influences 
which led to the writing of the Waverley 



n8 Woman's Work in Fiction 

novels. Scott says in the preface of these 
books: 

" Without being so presumptuous as to hope 
to emulate the rich humour, pathetic tender- 
ness, and admirable tact which pervade the work 
of my accomplished friend, I felt that some- 
thing might be attempted for my own country, 
of the same kind with that which Miss Edge- 
worth so fortunately achieved for Ireland — ■ 
something which might introduce her natives to 
those of the sister kingdom in a more favour- 
able light than they had been placed hitherto, 
and tend to procure sympathy for their virtues 
and indulgence for their foibles." 

As the reader realises the power of Maria 
Edgeworth 's mind, her ability to describe man- 
ners and customs, to read character, and to 
depict comic and tragic scenes, he wishes that 
her father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, had not 
so constantly interfered in her work, and in- 
sisted that every book she wrote must illustrate 
some principle of education. He was not sin- 
gular in this respect. Rousseau, whom he 
greatly admired at one time, had taught edu- 
cational methods by a novel. Madame de 
Genlis, the teacher cf Louis Philippe, was 
writing novels that were celebrated throughout 
Europe, in which she expounded rules for the 
training of the young. Maria Edgeworth, with 
her father at her elbow, never lost sight of the 



Maria Edgeworth 119 

moral of her tale. Vivian, in the story of that 
name, was so weak that he was always at 
the mercy of the artful. Ormond's passions 
led him into trouble. Beauclerc was almost 
ruined by his foolish generosity. Lady Dela- 
cour, with no object in life but pleasure, 
cast aside her own happiness that she 
might outshine the woman she hated. Lady 
Clonbrony squandered her fortune and health 
that she might be snubbed by her social su- 
periors. Mrs. Beaumont played a deep diplo- 
matic game in her small circle of friends, and 
finally overreached herself. Lady Cecilia, the 
friend of Helen, brought sorrow to her and 
infamy upon herself by her duplicity. In the 
analysis of motive, and the growth of Cecilia's 
wrong-doing from a small beginning, the book 
resembles the novels of George Eliot. But 
Maria Edgeworth could not know her own 
characters as she otherwise would, because the 
moral was always uppermost. When Mrs. 
Inchbald criticised her novel Patronage, she 
replied: "Please to recollect, we had our moral 
to work out." Mr. Edgeworth, in his preface 
to Tales of Fashionable Life, thus sets forth 
his daughter's purpose: 

11 It has been my daughter's aim to promote 
by all her works the progress of education from 
the cradle to the grave. All the parts of this 
series of moral fiction bear upon the faults and 



120 Woman's Work in Fiction 

excellencies of different ages and classes; and 
they have all risen from that view of society 
which we have laid before the public in more 
didactic works on education." 

Such a method of writing tended to kill emo- 
tion, yet emotion breaks out at times with 
genuine force, and always has a true ring. This 
is especially true in the Tales of Fashionable 
Life. There society women appear cold and 
heartless in the drawing-room, and so they 
have generally been represented in fiction. So 
Thackeray regarded them. But Maria Edge- 
worth followed them to the boudoir, and there 
reveals beneath the laces and jewels many beau- 
tiful womanly traits. As we see in tale after 
tale true feeling welling to the surface, and 
then choked up by the moral, we recognise the 
pathetic truth that Mr. Edgeworth's educational 
methods were fatal to genius. 

But strong emotion sways only a small part 
of the lives of most men and women. Were 
it otherwise, like the great lyric poets, we should 
all die young. And she has written about the 
common, everyday, prosaic life with a truth- 
fulness rarely excelled. 

One of the most interesting studies in a 
novel is to observe the author's view of life. 
With the exception of those of Mademoiselle De 
Scud^ri nearly all the novels of French women 
considered love as the ruling passion for happi- 



Maria Edgeworth 121 

ness or woe, and all of the characters were under 
its sway. Even Mademoiselle De Scuderi in the 
preface to Ibrahim announced it as her distinct 
purpose that all her heroes were to be ruled by 
the two most sublime passions, love and ambi- 
tion ; but she was a humorist and unconsciously 
interested her readers more by her witty descrip- 
tions of people than by the loves of Cyrus and 
Mandane. But this passion has seldom held such 
an exaggerated place in the stories of English 
women. Maria Edgeworth in particular noticed 
that men and women were actuated by many 
motives or passions. A large income or a title 
was often capable of inspiring a feeling so akin 
to love that even the bosom that felt its glow 
was unable to distinguish the difference. Loss 
of respect could kill the strongest passion, and 
some of her heroines have even remained single, 
or else married men whom at first they had 
regarded with indifference, rather than marry 
the object of their first love after he had for- 
feited their esteem. Sometimes the tameness 
of her heroines shocked their author. While 
correcting Belinda for Mrs. Barbauld's "Nov- 
elists' Library," Miss Edgeworth wrote to a 
friend : 

"I really was so provoked with the cold 
tameness of that stick or stone Belinda, that I 
could have torn the pages out." 

Propinquity, opportunity, almost a mental 



122 Woman's Work in Fiction 

suggestion are quite enough to produce a long 
chain of events affecting a lifetime. "Ask half 
the men you are acquainted with why they are 
married, and their answer, if they speak the 
truth, will be, 'Because I met Miss Such-a-One 
at such a place, and we were continually 
together. ' ' Propinquity, propinquity, ' as my 
father used to say, and he was married five 
times, and twice to heiresses." So speaks 
Mrs. Broadhurst, a match-making mother in 
The Absentee. And this is the reason why most 
of Miss Edgeworth's heroes and heroines love. 
But the advances of a designing woman are 
quite sufficient, as in Vivian, to make a fond 
lover forget his plighted troth to another, and the 
flattery of an unscrupulous man makes him sus- 
picious of his real friends. Character is destiny, 
if the character is strong, but circumstances 
are destiny, if the character is weak. It is the 
aim of her novels to show how certain traits 
of character, as indecision, pride, love of luxury, 
indolence, lead to misfortune, and how these 
dangerous traits may be overcome. 

Notwithstanding her moral, her plots are 
never hackneyed and never repeated. They are 
drawn from life and have the variety of life. 
In the story of Ennui, there is the twice-told 
tale of the nurse's son substituted for the real 
heir; but when he learns the true story of his 



Maria Edgeworth 123 

birth, and resigns the castle, the title, and all 
its wealth to the rightful Earl of Glenthorn, who 
has been living in the village working at the forge, 
there is a great change from the usual story. The 
heir of the ancient family of Glenthorn accepts 
the earldom for his son, but with reluctance. The 
manners of the peasant remain with the earl, and 
the poor man, at last, begs the one who has been 
educated for the position to accept the title and 
the estates. In this she emphasised again what 
she constantly taught, that education and envi- 
ronment are more powerful than heredity. 

As she taught that reason should be the guide 
of life, so she lived. Her fourscore years and 
three were spent largely at her ancestral home 
of Edgeworthstown. She assisted her father 
in making improvements to better the condition 
of the tenantry, and to promote their happi- 
ness. When in Paris, she met a Mr. Edelcrantz, 
a gentleman in the service of the king of Sweden. 
Admiration was succeeded by love. But he 
could not leave the court at Stockholm, and 
Miss Edgeworth felt that neither duty nor incli- 
nation would permit her to leave her quiet life 
in Ireland. Reason was stronger than love. 
So they parted like her own heroes and heroines. 
All that history records of him is that he never 
married. She resumed her responsibilities at 
home, and if the thought of this separation 
sometimes brought the tears to her eyes, as her 



124 Woman's Work in Fiction 

stepmother once wrote to a friend, she was as 
cheerful, gay, and light-hearted in the home 
circle as she had always been. 

Besides her moral tales for adults, which were 
read throughout Europe, Maria Edgeworth was 
always interested in the education of boys and 
girls. The eldest sister in a family of twenty- 
one children, the offspring of four marriages, 
she taught her younger brothers and sisters, 
and thus grew to know intimately the needs 
of childhood and what stories would appeal 
to them. As her father wrote, it was her 
"aim to promote by all her works the progress 
of education from the cradle to the grave." 
In her stories for children she inculcated les- 
sons of industry, economy, though tfulness, and 
unselfishness. 

If she helped to eradicate from the novel its 
false, highly colored sentimental pictures of life, 
still greater was her work in producing liter- 
ature for young people. Hers were among the 
first wholesome stories written for children. 
Before this the chapman had carried about with 
him in his pack small paper-covered books 
which warned boys and girls of the dangers 
of a life of crime. One book was named An 
hundred godly lessons which a mother on her 
death-bed gave to her children. Another book 
of religious and moral Sunday reading was 



Maria Edgeworth 125 

called The Afflicted Parent, or the Undutiful 
Child Punished. This gives the sad history 
of the two children of a gentleman in Ches- 
ter, a son and a daughter. The daughter 
chided her brother for his wickedness, upon 
which he struck her and killed her. He was 
hanged for this, but even then his punishment 
was not completed. He came back to life, 
told the minister several wicked deeds which 
he had committed, and was hanged a second 
time. In most of these tales the gallows loomed 
dark and threatening. 

In contrast to these morbid tales are the 
wholesome stories of Maria Edgeworth. The 
boys and girls about whom she writes are drawn 
from life. If they are bad, their crimes are 
never enormous, but simply a yielding to the 
common temptations of childhood. Hal, in 
Waste Not, Want Not, thinks economy beneath 
a gentleman's notice, and at last loses a prize 
in an archery contest for lack of a piece of string 
which he had destroyed. Fisher in The Barring 
Out, a cowardly boy, buys twelve buns for 
himself with a half-crown which belonged to his 
friend, and then gives a false account of the 
money. His punishment is expulsion from 
the school. Lazy Lawrence has a worse fate. 
He will not work, plays pitch farthing, is led 
by bad companions to steal, and is sent to 



i26 Woman's Work in Fiction 

Bridewell. But he is not left in a hopeless 
condition. After he had served his term of im- 
prisonment he became remarkable for his 
industry. 

But there are more good boys and girls than 
bad ones in her stories. The love of children 
for their parents, and the sacrifices they will 
make for those they love, are beautifully told. 
In the story of The Orphans, Mary, a girl of 
twelve, finds a home for her brothers and sisters, 
after her father and mother die, in the ruins of 
Rossmore Castle, where they support them- 
selves by their labour. Mary finds that she 
can make shoes of cloth with soles of platted 
hemp, and by this industry the children earn 
enough for all their needs. As directions are 
given for making these shoes, any little girl 
reading the story would know how to follow 
the example of Mary. Jem in the story of 
Lazy Lawrence finds that there are many ways 
by which he can earn the two guineas without 
which his horse Lightfoot must be sold. He 
works early and late, and at last accomplishes 
his purpose. 

Mrs. Ritchie says of this story: "Lightfoot 
deserves to take his humble place among the 
immortal winged steeds of mythology along 
with Pegasus, or with Black Bess, or Balaam's 
Ass, or any other celebrated steeds." 

The story of Simple Susan with its pictures 



Maria Edge worth 127 

of village life has the charm of an idyl. The 
children by the hawthorn bush choosing their 
May Queen; Susan with true heroism refusing 
this honour, in order that she may care for her 
sick mother; the incident of the guinea-hen; 
Rose's love for Susan; the old harper, playing 
tunes to the children grouped about him — are 
all simply told. Susan's love for her pet lamb 
reminds one of Wordsworth's poem of that 
name. 

And yet these children are not unusual. 
Most boys and girls have days when they are 
as good as Mary, or Jem, or Susan. Maria 
Edgeworth is not inculcating virtues which are 
impossible of attainment. 

A hundred years ago, these stories, as they 
came from the pen of Maria Edgeworth, de- 
lighted boys and girls, and for at least fifty years 
were read by parents and children. Then for 
a time they were hidden in libraries, but a col- 
lection of them has lately been edited by Mr. 
Charles Welsh under the appropriate title Tales 
that never Die, which have proved as interesting 
to the children of to-day as to those of by- 
gone generations. 

Whether Maria Edgeworth is writing for old 
or young, there is one marked trait in all her 
stories, her kind feeling for all humanity. The 
vices of her villains are recorded in a tone of 
sorrow. She seldom uses satire; never "makes 



128 Woman's Work in Fiction 

fun" of her characters. Her attitude towards 
them is that of the lady of Edgeworthstown 
towards her dependents, or rather that of the 
elder sister towards the younger members of the 
family. Such broad and loving sympathy ir 
found in Shakespeare and Scott, but seldom 
among lesser writers. 

In Sydney Owenson, better known by her 
married name of Lady Morgan, Ireland found 
at this time another warm but less judicious 
friend. Her life was more interesting than her 
books. Her father, an Irish actor, introduced 
his daughter, while yet a child, to his associates, 
so that she appeared in society at an early age. 
But Mr. Owenson was improvident ; debts accu- 
mulated, and Sydney at the age of fourteen 
began to earn her own living. The position 
of a governess, which she filled for a time, being 
unsuited to her gay, independent disposition, 
she began to write. Like Johnson a half cen- 
tury or more earlier, with a play in manuscript 
as her most valuable possession, she went alone 
to London. She did not wait so long as he 
did for recognition. New books by new authors 
were eagerly read. She earned money, a social 
position, fame, and with ic some disagreeable 
notoriety. An independent, witty Irish woman 
of great charm, fearless in expressing her opin- 
ions, who had introduced herself into society 



Lady Morgan 129 

and for whom nobody stood as sponsor, was 
looked upon by the old-fashioned English 
aristocracy as an adventuress; and later, when 
she came forth as the champion of Irish liberties, 
and upbraided England for tyranny, she was 
maliciously denounced by the Tory party. 

She entered upon life with three purposes, to 
each of which she adhered: to advocate the 
interest of Ireland by her writings; to pay her 
father's debts; and to provide for his old age. 
All of these purposes she accomplished. 

Besides plays and poems, and two or three 
insignificant stories, she wrote four novels upon 
Irish subjects: The Wild Irish Girl, O'Donnel, 
Florence Macarthy, and The O'Briens and the 
O'Flahertys. In all these books the beauty of 
Irish scenery is depicted as background; the 
fashionable life of Dublin is described, as well 
as the peasant life in remote hamlets; while the 
natural resources of the land and the native 
gaiety of the Celtic temperament are feelingly 
contrasted with the poverty and misery brought 
about by unjust laws. 

She thus feelingly describes the condition of 
Ireland in the novel O'Donnel. Its sincerity 
must excuse its overwrought style: " Silence and 
oblivion hung upon her destiny, and in the 
memory of other nations she seemed to hold 
no place; but the first bolt which was knocked 
off her chain roused her from paralysis, and, 
9 



130 Woman's Work in Fiction 

as link fell after link, her faculties strengthened, 
her powers revived; she gradually rose upon 
the political horizon of Europe, like her own 
star brightening in the west, and lifting its light 
above the fogs, vapours, and clouds, which 
obscured its lustre. The traveller now beheld 
her from afar, and her shores, once so devoutly 
pressed by the learned, the pious, and the brave, 
again exhibited the welcome track of the stran- 
ger's foot. The natural beauties of the land 
were again explored and discovered, and taste 
and science found the reward of their enter- 
prise and labours in a country long depicted as 
savage, because it had long been exposed to 
desolation and neglect." 

In this book a party of travellers visits the 
Giant's Causeway and its scenery is described 
as an almost unfrequented place. 

The new interest in Ireland of which she 
writes was very largely due to the novels of 
Maria Edgeworth, and partly to those of Lady 
Morgan herself. 

Her last novel, The O'Briens and the O'Flaher- 
tys, is of historic value. Its plot was furnished 
by the stirring events which took place when the 
Society of United Irishmen were fighting for par- 
liamentary reforms. Lord Edward Fitzgerald, 
the devoted patriot, is easily recognised in the 
brave Lord Walter Fitzwalter, and the life of 
Thomas Corbet furnished the thrilling adven- 



Lady Morgan 131 

tures of the hero, Lord Arranmore. When 
Thomas Moore visited Thomas Corbet at Caen 
he referred to the account given of his escape 
from prison in Lady Morgan's novel as re- 
markably accurate in its details. 

The style of Miss Owenson's earlier books 
was execrable and fully justified the severe 
criticism in the first number of the Quarterly 
Review. It gives this quotation from Ida, or 
the Woman of Athens: "Like Aurora, the ex- 
tremities of her delicate limbs were rosed with 
flowing hues, and her little foot, as it pressed its 
naked beauty on a scarlet cushion, resembled 
that of a youthful Thetis from its blushing tints, 
or that of a fugitive Atalanta from its height." 
The wonder is that any serious magazine should 
have wasted two pages of space upon such 
nonsense. In ridiculing the book and the 
author, it gives her some serious advice, with 
the encouragement that if she follow it, she 
may become, not a writer of novels, but the 
happy mistress of a family. 

Whether Lady Morgan took this ill-meant 
advice or not, her style improved with each 
book, until in The O'Briens and the O'Flahertys 
it became simple and clear, with only an occa- 
sional tendency to high colouring and bombast. 

Maria Edgeworth has described the customs 
and manners of Ireland, and unfolded the 
character of its people in a manner that has 



132 Woman's Work in Fiction 

never been equalled. But Lady Morgan, far 
inferior as an artist, has given fuller and more 
picturesque descriptions of the landscape of 
the country, and has made a valuable addition 
to the books bearing on the history of Ireland. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Elizabeth Hamilton. Anna Porter. 
Jane Porter 

ELIZABETH HAMILTON was also an Irish 
writer, but through her one novel she will 
always be associated with Scotland. In The 
Cottagers of Glenburnie she did for the Scotch 
people what Maria Edgeworth had done for the 
Irish, and represented for the first time in 
fiction the life of the common people. It is a 
story of poor people of the serving class. Mrs. 
Mason, who had been an upper servant in the 
family of a lord, has been pensioned and takes 
up her abode with a cousin in the village of 
Glenburnie. She was among the earliest of our 
settlement workers. This little village with the 
pretty name, situated in a beautiful country, 
had accumulated about its homes as much filth 
as the tenements of the poorest ward of a large 
city, and for the same reason, that its inhabi- 
tants did not understand the value of cleanliness. 
Its thatched cottages, had it not been for their 
chimneys and the smoke issuing from them, 
133 



134 Woman's Work in Fiction 

would have passed for stables or hog-sties, for 
there was a dunghill in front of every door. 

Mrs. MacClarty's cottage, where Mrs. Mason 
was to live, was like all the rest. It was as 
dirty inside as out. Mrs. MacClarty picked up 
a cloth from the floor beside her husband's 
boots, with which to wipe her dishes, and made 
her cheese in a kettle which had not been washed 
since the chickens had eaten their last meal 
from it, although the remains of their feast still 
adhered to the sides. When Mrs. MacClarty 
put her black hands into the cheese to stir it, 
Mrs. Mason reminded her gently that she had 
not washed them: 

" 'Hoot,' returned the gudewife, 'my hands 
do weel eneugh. I canna be fash'd to clean 
them at ilka turn.' " 

When Mrs. Mason proposed that the windows 
should be hung on hinges and supplied with 
iron hooks, so that they could be opened at 
pleasure, Mr. MacClarty objected to the plan: 

" 'And wha do you think wad put in the 
cleek?' returned he. 'Is there ane, think ye, 
aboot this hoose, that would be at sic a fash?' 

"'Ilka place has just its ain gait,' said the 
gudewife, ' and ye needna think that ever we '11 
learn yours. And, indeed, to be plain wi' you, 
cusine, I think you hae owre mony fykes. 
There, didna ye keep Grizzy for mair than twa 
hours, yesterday morning, soopin' and dustin' 



Elizabeth Hamilton 



i35 



your room in every corner, an' cleanin' out the 
twa bits of buird, that are for naething but to 
set your foot on after a'?' " 

It may be well to explain that the chickens 
had been roosting in this chamber before Mrs. 
Mason's arrival. 

The story of Mr. MacClarty's death is pa- 
thetic. He is lying ill with a fever in the press- 
bed in the kitchen, where not a breath of air 
reaches him. The neighbours have crowded in 
to offer sympathy. The doors are tightly closed, 
and his wife has piled blankets over him and 
given him whiskey and hot water to drink. 
When Mrs. Mason, who knows that with proper 
care his life can be saved, urges that he be re- 
moved to her room where he can have air, all 
the neighbours violently oppose her advice. But 
Peter MacGlashon, the oracle of the village, 
looks at it more philosophically: 

11 'If it 's the wull o' God that he 's to dee, it 's 
a' ane whar ye tak him; ye canna hinder the 
wull o' God.'" 

But upon Mrs. Mason's insisting that we 
should do our best to save the life of the sick 
with the reason God has given us, Peter becomes 
alarmed : 

'"That's no soond doctrine,' exclaimed 
Peter. 'It 's the law of works.'" 

Elizabeth Hamilton had been a teacher and 
had written books on education, so that her 



136 Woman's Work in Fiction 

description of the school which Mrs. Mason 
opened in the village gives an accurate idea 
of the Scottish schools for the poorer classes. 
Each class was divided into landlord, tenants, 
and under-tenants, one order being responsible 
for a specific amount of reading and writing to 
the order above it. The landlord was re- 
sponsible to the master both for his own dili- 
gence and the diligence of his vassals. If the 
tenants disobeyed the laws they were tried 
by a jury of their mates. The results of the 
training at Mrs. Mason's school might well be 
an aim of teachers to-day: "To have been 
educated at the school of Glenburnie implied 
a security for truth, diligence and honesty." 

The pupils in the school gradually learned 
to love cleanliness and order. The little flower- 
garden in front gave pleasure to all. The 
villagers declared, "The flowers are a hantel 
bonnier than the midden and smell a hantel 
sweeter, too." With this improvement in 
taste, the "gude auld gaits" gave way to a 
better order of things. 

The Cottagers of Glenburnie is more realistic 
in detail than anything which had yet been 
written. It is a short simple story told in sim- 
ple language. There is a slight plot, but it is 
the village upon which our attention is fastened. 
One individual stands out more strongly than 
the rest: that is Mrs. MacClarty with hereon- 



Anna Porter 137 

stant expression, "It is well eneugh. I canna 
be fashed." 

This little book was read in every Scotch 
village, and many of the poor people saw in it 
a picture of their own homes. But its sound 
common-sense appealed to them. It was rea- 
sonable that butter without hairs would sell 
for more than with them, and that gardens 
without weeds would produce more vegetables 
than when so encumbered. The book did for 
the cottagers of Scotland what Mrs. Mason had 
done for those of Glenburnie. 

The lives of Anna Maria and Jane Porter 
resemble in a few particulars that of Elizabeth 
Hamilton. Like her they belonged, at least 
on the father's side, to Ireland, and like her 
they lived in Scotland, and their names will 
always be associated with that country. But 
Elizabeth Hamilton wrote the first novel of 
Scotland's poor, the ancestor of The Window 
in Thrums and Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush; 
Jane Porter wrote the first novel of Scotland's 
kings, the immediate forerunner of Waverley, 
The Abbot, and The Monastery. 

Upon the death of Major Porter, who had 
been stationed for some years with his regiment 
at Durham, Mrs. Porter removed to Edinburgh, 
where her children were educated. Their quick 
lively imaginations found food for growth on 



138 Woman's Work in Fiction 

Scottish soil. At that time Caledonia was a 
land of cliff and crag, inhabited by a quarrelsome 
people, whom the English still regarded with 
something the same aversion which Dr. Johnson 
had so often expressed to Boswell. But every 
castle had its story of brave knights and fair 
ladies, and every brae had been the scene of 
renowned deeds of arms. In every cottage the 
memory of the past was kept alive, and fathers 
and mothers related to their children stories 
of Wallace and of Bruce, until the romantic 
past became more real than the living present. 
Mrs. Porter's servants delighted to relate to 
her eager children stories of Scotland's glory. 
The maids would sing to them the songs of 
"Wallace wight," and the serving-man would 
tell them tales of Bannockburn and Cam- 
bus-Kenneth. 

Rarely have stories fallen on such fertile soil. 
In a short time, three of these children became 
famous. Sir Robert Ker Porter, the brother of 
Anna and Jane, followed closely in the 
footsteps of Scotland's heroes, and became dis- 
tinguished as a soldier and diplomat, as well 
as a famous painter of battles. He painted the 
enormous canvas of The Storming of Seringa- 
patarn, a sensational panorama, one hundred 
and twenty feet in length, the first of its kind, 
but in a style that has often been followed in 
recent years. The idol of his family, it would 



Anna Porter 139 

seem that he was endowed with many of those 
qualities which his sisters gave to the heroes 
of their romances. 

Anna Maria Porter, the youngest of the group, 
was the first to appear in print. At the age of 
fifteen, she published a little volume called 
Artless Tales. From this time until her death, 
at least every two years a new book from her 
pen was announced. She wrote a large number 
of historical romances, which were widely read 
and translated into many languages. This kind 
of story, in the hands of Sophia Lee, was tame 
and uninteresting. Anna Porter increased its 
scope and its popularity. Her plots are well 
worked out with many thrilling adventures. 
Her imagination, however, had been quickened 
by reading, not by observation, and although 
her scenes cover many countries of Europe 
and many periods of history, they differ but 
little in pictorial detail, and her characters are 
lifeless. Her style of writing is, moreover, so 
inflated that it gives an air of unreality to her 
books. 

She thus describes the Hungarian brothers: 
"They were, indeed, perfect specimens of the 
loveliness of youth and the magnificence of 
manhood. ' ' This novel, dealing with the French 
Revolution, was one of the most popular of 
all her stories. It went through several editions 
both in England and on the continent. Super- 



140 Woman's Work in Fiction 

lative expressions seem to have been fashionable 
in that age which was still encumbered by much 
that was artificial in dress and manners. Miss 
Porter with proper formality thus writes of 
her heroine as she was recovering from a faint- 
ing fit: "With a blissful shiver, Ippolita plowly 
unclosed her eyes, and turning them round, 
with such a look as we may imagine blessed 
angels cast, when awakening amid the raptures 
of another world, she met those of her sweet 
and gracious uncle." 

Some of her society novels are witty and have 
a lively style, which suggests the truth of Mr. 
S. C. Hall's description of the sisters. Anna, 
a blonde, handsome and gay, he named L'Alle- 
gro, in contrast to Jane, a brunette, equally 
handsome, but with the dignified manners of the 
heroines of her own romances, whom he styled 
II Penseroso. 

Jane Porter took a more serious view of the 
responsibilities of authorship than her sister. 
Her first novel, Thaddeus of Warsaw, was 
written while England was agitated against 
France and excited over the wrongs of Poland. 
It grew out of popular feeling. Miss Porter had 
become acquainted with friends of Kosciusko, 
men who had taken part with him in his coun- 
try's struggle for liberty, and made him the 
hero of the story. The scenery of Poland was 



Jane Porter 141 

so well described that the Poles refused to be- 
lieve that she had not visited their country; 
and events were related in a manner so pleasing 
to them that they distinguished the author by 
many honours. It is one thing to write an 
historical novel of people and events that have 
long been buried in oblivion ; but to write a story 
of times so near the present that its chief actors 
are still living, is, indeed, a rash task. And 
for any history to meet with the approval of 
its hero and his friends bespeaks rare excellence 
in the work. 

In the light of the classic standing of the 
historical novel, due to the genius of Scott and 
Dumas, it is interesting to read how Thaddeus 
of Warsaw came to be published. Miss Porter 
wrote the romance merely for her own amuse- 
ment, with no thought of its being read outside 
the circle of her family and intimate friends. 
They urged her to publish it. But for a long 
time she resisted their importunities on the 
ground that it did not belong to any known 
style of writing: stories of real life, like Tom 
Jones, or improbable romances, like The Mys- 
teries of Udolpho, were the only legitimate forms 
of fiction. Thaddeus of Warsaw had the exact 
details of history with a romance added to 
please the author's fancy. Thus did Jane 
Porter discover to the world the possibilities 
of the historical novel. 



142 Woman's Work in Fiction 

Her next novel, The Scottish Chiefs, grew 
out of the stories she had heard in her childhood. 
Besides the tales of Scotland's struggle for inde- 
pendence which she heard from the servants 
in her own home, a venerable old woman called 
Luckie Forbes, who lived not far from Mrs. 
Porter's house, used to tell her of the wonderful 
deeds of William Wallace. Of the influence 
these stories had upon her childish mind, Jane 
Porter has thus written: 

"I must avow, that to Luckie Forbes's 
familiar, and even endearing, manner of nar- 
rating the lives of William Wallace and his 
dauntless followers; her representation of their 
heart-sacrifices for the good of their country, 
filling me with an admiration and a reverential 
amazement, like her own ; and calling forth my 
tears and sobs, when she told of the deaths of 
some, and of the cruel execution of the virtuous 
leader of them all; — to her I must date my 
early and continued enthusiasm in the character 
of Sir William Wallace! and in the friends his 
truly hero-soul delighted to honour." 

Before writing The Scottish Chiefs, Miss Porter 
read everything she could find bearing upon 
the history of England and Scotland during 
the reigns of the first two Edwards. She per- 
sonally visited the places she described. She 
wrote in the preface: "I assure the reader that 
I seldom lead him to any spot in Scotland 



Jane Porter 143 

whither some written or oral testimony re- 
specting my hero had not previously conducted 
myself." Besides these sources of information, 
Miss Porter was familiar with the poem of 
Wallace by Blind Harry the Minstrel, the 
biographer of Scotland's national hero. Blind 
Harry lived nearly two centuries after the death 
of Wallace, but he had access to books now 
lost, and collected stories about Scotland's 
struggle for independence while it was still 
prominent in the public mind. Although he 
tells many exalted stories of the numbers whom 
Wallace overcame by his single arm, the poem 
is on the whole authentic. Sheriff Mackay 
in the Dictionary of National Biography writes 
that the life of Wallace by Blind Harry "became 
the secular bible of his countrymen, and echoes 
through their later history. " Miss Porter intro- 
duced love scenes to vary the deeds of war, 
but there is nothing else in The Scottish Chiefs 
which is not true to history, or to that more 
legitimate source of romance, the traditions 
common among the people. 

From the opening chapter, in which Wallace 
is described as an outlaw because he had re- 
fused to take the oath of allegiance to an Eng- 
lish king, to his death in London and the final 
crowning of Bruce, there is not a dull page. 
Especially interesting is the scene between 
William Wallace and the Earl of Carrick, after 



144 Woman's Work in Fiction 

the battle of Falkirk, and the appearance of 
Robert Bruce, who overheard this conversation, 
fighting by the side of Wallace. The truth of 
this incident has been denied, but it is related 
by Blind Harry. The trial of William Wallace 
in the great hall at Westminster for treason, 
and his defence that he had never acknowledged 
the English government, is most impressive, 
and is a matter of record. 

The Scottish Chiefs is the first historical novel 
in which the' author made diligent research in 
order to give a truthful representation of the 
times. It has the atmosphere of feudal days. 
Notwithstanding the ridicule cast upon Wallace 
as a lady's hero, he is drawn in heroic propor- 
tions. Miss Mitford declared that she scarcely 
knew "one herds de roman whom it is possible 
to admire, except Wallace in Miss Porter's 
story." The work is written in the style of 
the old epics. The many puerile attempts of 
the last few years to write an historical romance 
in which Washington or Lincoln should figure 
have shown how difficult is the task. How 
weak and commonplace have these great men 
appeared in fiction! It requires a nature akin 
to the heroic to draw it. In 1810, when it was 
published, The Scottish Chiefs was the only 
great historical romance. Four years later 
Waver ley was published, the first of the novels 
of Sir Walter Scott. This was superior in 



Jane Porter 145 

imagination and in craftsmanship to Miss Por- 
ter's novel, but not in interest. The Scottish 
Chiefs has since been excelled by many others 
of the Waverley novels, though not by all, by 
Henry Esmond, and A Tale of Two Cities, but 
it preceded all these in time, and still holds a 
place as a classic of the second rank. 

Critics of to-day smile at its enthusiastic 
style, but Miss Porter speaks with no more 
enthusiasm than did the poor folk from whom 
she heard the story. As long as enthusiastic 
youth loves an unblemished hero, The Scottish 
Chiefs will be read. It is impossible to analyse 
these early impressions or to test their truth. 
One can only remember them with gratitude. 
Jane Porter has, however, taught the youth 
of other lands to reverence Scotland's popular 
hero, so that the mention of his name awakens 
a thrill of pleasure, and the hills and glades 
associated with his deeds glow with the light of 
romance. 

In 181 5, Jane Porter wrote a third historical 
novel, The Pastor's Fireside. This is far in- 
ferior to The Scottish Chiefs. It has the same 
elevated style, and the mystery which sur- 
rounds the hero awakens and holds the attention. 
But the novel deals with the later Stuarts, and 
one feels that the author herself was but little 
interested in the historical events about which she 
was writing. The book has no abiding qualities. 



146 Woman's Work in Fiction 

In 1832 was published a book bearing the 
title Sir Edward Seaward' s Narrative of His 
Shipwreck and Consequent Discovery of certain 
Islands in the Caribbean Sea, with a Detail of 
many extraordinary and highly interesting Events 
in his Life from the year 1733 to 1749 as written 
in his Own Diary. Edited by Jane Porter. In 
the preface Miss Porter explains how the manu- 
script was given to her by the relatives of Sir 
Edward. The story reads like a second Robin- 
son Crusoe. It has all the minute details that 
give an air of verisimilitude to the writings 
of Defoe. In the opening chapter, Edward 
Seaward supposedly gives this account of 
himself: 

"Born of loyal and honest parents, whose 
means were just sufficient to give a common 
education to their children, I have neither to 
boast of pedigree nor of learning; yet they be- 
queathed to me a better inheritance — a stout 
constitution, a peaceable disposition, and a 
proper sense of what is due to my superiors 
and equals ; for such an inheritance I am grateful 
to God, and to them." 

In the story he is married to a woman of his 
own rank, and she embarks with him for Ja- 
maica, but they are shipwrecked on an island 
near Lat. 14 deg. 30 min. N. and Long. 81 
deg. W. They find bags of money hidden on 
the island, some negroes come to them, and a 



Jane Porter 147 

schooner is driven to their haven. Edward 
sees in this a purpose which afterward is ful- 
filled. He says to his wife: "I should be the 
most ungrateful of men, to the good God who 
has bestowed all this on me, if I did not feel 
that this money, so wonderfully delivered into 
my hands, was" for some special purpose of stew- 
ardship. The providential arrival of the poor 
castaway negroes, and then of the schooner, — 
all — all working together to give us the means 
of providing every comfort, towards planting 
a colony of refuge in that blessed haven of our 
own preservation, — seem to me, in solemn 
truth, as so many signs from the Divine Will, 
that it is our duty to fulfil a task allotted to us, 
in that long unknown island." 

This island becomes inhabited by a happy 
people, and Seaward is knighted by George 
the Second. 

Everybody read the book. A second edition 
was called for within the year. Old naval 
officers got out their charts, and hunted up 
the probable locality of the places mentioned. 
Nobody at first doubted its veracity. The 
Quarterly, however, decided that no such man 
had ever existed and that the whole story was 
a fiction. It hunted for a schooner mentioned 
and the names of the naval officers. The latter 
had never served in his Majesty's navy and the 
former had not timed her voyages according to 



148 Woman's Work in Fiction 

the story. The uniform of a naval officer 
described in the narrative was not worn until 
thirteen years after these adventures had taken 
place, and no man by the name of Seaward had 
been knighted during this time, nor was there 
any village in England having the name of the 
village which he gave as his birthplace. Sup- 
posing the editor had changed names and dates, 
the Quarterly criticism becomes valueless. Al- 
though the magazine declared it a work of 
fiction, it gave both the story and the style 
high praise, and declared it far superior to her 
romances. When Miss Porter was asked about 
it, she declined to answer, but said that Scott 
had his great secret and she might be permitted 
to have her little one. 

It is generally considered now to have been 
the work of Jane Porter. No two books differ 
more in style than The Scottish Chiefs and 
Sir Edward Seaward. But twenty-two years 
had elapsed between them. The former is 
written in dignified, stately language; the latter 
in simple homely words, and both its invention 
and its style entitle it to a place among English 
classics. 



CHAPTER IX 

Amelia Opie. Mary Brunton 

EVERY novel that touches upon the life 
of its generation naturally in course of 
time becomes historical. These novels should 
be preserved, not necessarily for their literary 
excellence, but because they bear the imprint 
of an age. Such are the novels of Amelia Opie 
and Mary Brunton. 

Mrs. Opie, then Miss Alderson, left her quiet 
home in Norwich to visit London at the height 
of the furor occasioned by the French Revolu- 
tion. The literary circles in which she was 
received were discussing excitedly the rights of 
men and women, and the beauties of life lived 
according to the dictates of nature. Among 
these enthusiasts, Miss Alderson met Mary Woll- 
stonecraft, the author of Vindication of the 
Rights of Woman, and esteemed her highly. 
Her own imagination did not, however, yield 
to the intoxication of a life of perfect freedom, 
a dream which wrecked the life of Mary Woll- 
stonecraft. 

149 



150 Woman's Work in Fiction 

There is no sadder biography than that of 
Mary Wollstonecraft. In Paris, she met Gilbert 
Imlay, an American, with whom she fell in 
love. When he wished to marry her, she refused 
to permit him to make her his wife, because she 
had family debts to pay, and she was unwilling 
to have him legally responsible for them. But 
she had read the books of Rousseau, and had 
been deeply impressed with the thought that 
marriage is a bondage, not needed by true love. 
She took the name of Imlay, and passed for his 
wife, but the marriage was not sanctioned 
either by the church or by law. After the birth 
of a daughter, Imlay deserted her. At first 
she tried to commit suicide, and there is the 
sad picture of this talented woman walking 
about in the drenching rain, and then throwing 
herself from the bridge at Putney. She was 
rescued, and a little over a year later became 
the wife of William Godwin. 

The life-story of Mary Wollstonecraft sug- 
gested to Amelia Opie the novel of Adeline 
Mowbray, or the Mother and Daughter, which 
was not written until after the death of the 
original. 

It is a tender pathetic story. Mrs. Mowbray, 
the mother of Adeline, believed by her neigh- 
bours to be a genius, is interested in new theories 
of education, and, while writing a book on that 
subject, occasionally experiments with Adeline, 



Amelia Opie 151 

although she neglects her for the most part. 
In spite of this Adeline grows up beautiful and 
pure, totally ignorant of the world and its 
wickedness. Her mother often quoted in her 
presence the book of a Mr. Glenmurray, in 
which he proves marriage to be a tyranny and 
a profanation of the sacred ties of love. Ade- 
line is captivated by the enthusiastic ideals 
of the young author. There is a fine contrast 
in character and motive, where Adeline is enter- 
taining Mr. Glenmurray, the high-minded writer, 
and Sir Patrick O'Carrol, a man of many gal- 
lantries. Sir Patrick is shocked to meet at her 
home the man whose theories have banished 
him from respectable society. Adeline, inno- 
cent of any low interpretation that may be put 
upon her words, makes the frank avowal that, 
in her opinion, marriage is a shameless tie, and 
that love and honour are all that should bind 
men and women. Sir Patrick heartily agrees 
with her sentiments, and as a consequence 
accosts her with a freedom repugnant to her, 
although she hardly understands its import, 
while Glenmurray sits by gloomily, resolving 
to warn her in private that the opinions she 
had expressed were better confined in the 
present dark state of the public mind to a select 
and discriminating circle. After they leave 
Adeline, Glenmurray, as the outcome of this 
meeting, had the satisfaction of fighting a duel 



152 Woman's Work in Fiction 

with Sir Patrick, contrary to the tenets of his 
own book. 

But when, to escape the advances of Sir 
Patrick, Adeline places herself under the pro- 
tection of Glenmurray, who ardently loves her, 
he urges her to marry him. This she refuses 
to do, and encourages him to show the world 
the truth and beauty of his teachings. Glen- 
murray, a man of sensitive nature, suffers more 
than Adeline from the indignities she con- 
stantly receives when she frankly says she is 
Mr. Glenmurray's companion, not his wife. 
He takes her from place to place to avoid them, 
for he realises that the world censures her, while 
it excuses him. But Adeline is so happy in her 
love for him, and in her faith in his teachings, 
that she endures every humiliation with the 
faith of the early Christian martyrs. When 
he urges her, as he so often does, to marry him, 
he reads in her eyes only grief that he will not 
gladly suffer for what he believes to be right, 
and desists rather than pain her. But his death 
is hastened by the harassing thought that her 
whole future is blighted by his teachings. As 
he says to her just before his death: 

"Had not I, with the heedless vanity of 
youth, given to the world the crude conceptions 
of four-and-twenty, you might at this moment 
have been the idol of a respectable society; and 
I, equally respected, have been the husband 



Mary Brunton 153 

of your heart; while happiness would perhaps 
have kept that fatal disease at bay, of which 
anxiety has facilitated the approach." 

It is a beautiful love story, but the hero and 
heroine were of too fine a fibre to stand alone 
against the world. After the death of Glen- 
murray, the interest flags. The conclusion is 
weak, not at all worthy of the beginning. Love 
of every variety has been the theme of poets 
and novelists, but there is no love story more 
beautiful for its self-sacrificing devotion to 
principle and to each other, than the few pages 
of this novel which tell of the unsanctioned 
married life of the high-minded idealist and 
his bride. 

Mrs. Opie wrote Simple Tales and Tales of 
Real Life. They are for the most part pathetic 
stories in which unhappiness in the family 
circle is caused either by undue sternness of a 
parent, the unfilial conduct of a son or daugh- 
ter, or a misunderstanding between husband and 
wife. The feelings of the characters are often 
minutely described. A firm faith in the under- 
lying goodness of human nature is shown 
throughout all these tales, and all teach love 
and forbearance. 

Mary Brunton like Mrs. Opie wrote to improve 
the ethical ideals of her generation . In the books 
of that day the theory was often advanced 



154 Woman's Work in Fiction 

that young men must sow their wild oats, and 
that men were more pleasing to the ladies for 
a few vices. Her first novel. Self-Control, was 
written to contradict this doctrine. In a letter 
to Joanna Baillie, Mrs. Brunton wrote: 

"I merely intended to show the power of the 
religious principle in bestowing self-command, 
and to bear testimony against a maxim as 
immoral as indelicate, that a reformed rake 
makes the best husband." 

Laura, the heroine of Self-Control, ardently 
loved a man of rank and fashion. When she 
learned of his amours, her love turned first to 
grief, then to disgust. Stung by her abhorrence, 
he attempted to seduce her to conquer her pride. 
The purity of the heroine triumphs. She meets 
a man whom she esteems and afterwards 
marries. Many of Laura's adventures border 
on the improbable, but her emotions are truth- 
fully depicted. 

This was a bolder novel than appears on the 
surface. Long before this the wicked heroine 
had been banished from fiction. The leading 
lady must be virtuous to keep the love of the 
hero. Richardson laid down that law of the 
novel. Mary Brunton asserted the same rule 
for the hero, and maintained that a gentleman, 
handsome, noble, accomplished, could not re- 
tain the love of a pure woman, if he were not 
virtuous. 



Mary Brunton 155 

The book gave rise to heated discussions. 
Two gentlemen had a violent dispute over it: 
one said it ought to be burnt by the common 
hangman ; the other, that it ought to be written 
in letters of gold. Beyond its ethical import, 
the novel has no literary value. 

The kind reception given to Self-Control led 
the author to begin her second novel, Discipline. 
This was intended to show how the mind must 
be trained by suffering before it can hope for 
true enjoyment when self-control is lacking. 
Mary Brunton had read Miss Edgeworth's 
description of the Irish people with pleasure; 
so she planned to set_ forth in this novel the 
manners of the Scottish Highlands and of the 
Orkneys, where she herself had been born. 
But before it was finished, Waverley was pub- 
lished. There the Scottish Highlands stood 
forth on a large canvas, distinct and truthful, 
and Mrs. Brunton realised at once how weak 
her own attempts were compared with Scott's 
masterly work. Her interest in her book 
flagged, although it was published in December 
of that year. Some of the Highland scenes 
are interesting because accurately described, 
and her account of a mad-house in Edinburgh 
is said to be an exact representation of an 
asylum for the insane in that city. 

Mrs. Brunton died before her third novel, 
Emmeline, was finished. Her husband, the 



156 Woman's Work in Fiction 

Reverend Alexander Brunton, professor of 
Oriental Languages at Edinburgh University, 
published the fragment of it with her memoirs 
after her death. The aim of this novel was to 
show how little chance of happiness there is 
when a divorced woman marries her seducer. 
It only shows the inability of Emmeline to 
live down her past shame and the unhappiness 
which follows the married pair. 

In the novels of Mrs. Opie and Mary Brunton 
the standard of conduct is the same as to-day. 
Both men and women are expected to lead 
upright lives, with true regard for the happiness 
of those about them. In Self-Control the hero 
refuses to fight a duel with the villain who 
has injured him, and forgives him with a true 
Christian spirit. To be sure, there are still 
seductions, and the world of fashion is without 
a heart. But conduct which the former genera- 
tion would have regarded with a smile is here 
denominated sin, and that which they named 
Prudery shines forth as virtue. The prob- 
lems of life which these novels discuss are the 
same, as we have said, which agitate the world 
to-day. 



CHAPTER X 

Jane Austen 

IF in this age of steam and electricity you 
would escape from the noise of the city, 
and experience for an hour the quiet joys of the 
English countryside, at a time when a chaise 
and four was the quickest means of reaching the 
metropolis from any part of the kingdom, turn 
to the pages of Jane Austen. In them have been 
preserved faithful pictures of the peaceful life 
of the south of England exactly as it existed 
a hundred and more years ago. The gently slop- 
ing downs crossed by hedgerows, the lazy rivers 
meandering through the valleys, the little vil- 
lages half hidden in the orchards of apple, pear, 
peach, and plum, all suggest the land of happy 
homes. On the outskirts of every village there 
are the two of three gentlemen's houses: the 
substantial mansion of the squire, with its park 
of old elms, oaks, and beeches; a smaller house 
suitable for a gentleman of slender income, like 
Mr. Bennet, the father of the four girls of Pride 
and Prejudice, or for an elder son who will in 
time take possession of the hall, like Charles 
157 



158 Woman's Work in Fiction 

Musgrove in the story of Persuasion; and the 
still smaller parsonage standing in the garden 
of vegetables and flowers, surrounded by a 
laurel hedge, where lives a younger son or a 
friend of the family. 

The gentry that inhabit these homes carry 
on the plot of Jane Austen's novels. And what 
an even, almost uneventful life they lead. Life 
with them is one long holiday. Dance follows 
dance, varied only by a dinner at the mansion, 
a picnic party, private theatricals, a brief 
sojourn at Bath, a briefer one in London, or a 
ride to Lyme, seventeen miles away. But Cupid 
ever hovers near, and in each one of these groups 
of gentle folk we watch the course of true love, 
"which never did run smooth." For in spite 
of match-making mammas and stern fathers 
with an eye that the marriage settlements shall 
be sufficient to clothe sentiment with true 
British respectability, the six novels of Jane 
Austen contain as many true and tender love 
stories, differing from one another not so much 
in the incidents as in the characters of the lovers. 
Unlike the older novelists, who constantly drew 
the attention away from the main theme by 
stories of thrilling adventure, Jane Austen holds 
closely to the great problem of fiction, whether 
or not the youths and maidens will be happily 
married at the conclusion of the book. 

When Darcy first meets Elizabeth, the heroine 



Jane Austen 159 

of Pride and Prejudice, he shuns her and her 
family as vulgar. Elizabeth is so prejudiced 
against him that she cannot forget his insulting 
arrogance. But Darcy's love cannot be 
stemmed. Other heroes have plunged into 
raging floods to rescue the fair heroine. Darcy 
does more. For love of Elizabeth he accepts 
the whole Bennet family, including Mrs. Bennet, 
who always says the silly thing, and Lydia, who 
had almost invited Wickham to elope with her 
and was indifferent as to whether or not he 
married her, until Darcy compelled him to do so 
— a bitter humiliation for a man whose greatest 
fault was overweening pride of birth. At 
last, Elizabeth comprehends the extent of his 
generosity, his superior understanding and 
strength of character, and Darcy is rewarded 
by the hand of the sunniest heroine in all fiction. 
Who but Elizabeth with her independent spirit, 
quick intelligence and lively wit could curb his 
family pride! They marry, and we know they 
will be happy. 

Sense and Sensibility works out a problem 
for lovers. Like many romantic girls, Marianne 
asserts that a woman can love but once. "He 
never loved that loved not at first sight ' ' is also 
part of her creed. But after her infatuation for 
Willoughby has been cured, she contentedly 
marries Colonel Brandon, although she knows 
that he frequently has rheumatism and wears 



160 Woman's Work in Fiction 

flannel waistcoats. Marianne will be much 
happier as the wife of a man of mature years 
who loves her impulsive nature and can control 
it than she would have been with the gallant 
who won her first love. 

In the piquant satire of Northanger Abbey 
there is another problem suggested. This book 
is distinctly modern. Man is the pursued; 
woman the pursuer. Bernard Shaw has treated 
this momentous question in a serious manner 
in many of his plays. Jane Austen regards it 
with a humorous smile. Did Henry Tilney ever 
know why he married Catherine Morland? Or 
was this daughter of a country parsonage, with- 
out beauty, without accomplishments, and 
without riches, aware that on her first visit to 
Bath she used feminine arts that would have 
put Becky Sharp to shame — who, by the way, 
was a little girl at that time — and would have 
made Anne, the knowing heroine of Man and 
Superman, green with envy? Yet her arts 
consisted simply in following the dictates of 
her heart. She fell in love with Henry Tilney ; 
looked for him whenever she entered the pump- 
room; was unhappy if he were absent and ex- 
pressed her joy at his approach ; saw in him the 
paragon of wisdom and looked at every thing with 
his eyes. From first ignoring her, he began to 
seek her society, and learn the true excellence of 
her character. And then Jane Austen explains : 



Jane Austen 161 

"I must confess that this affection originated 
in nothing better than gratitude; or in other 
words, that a persuasion of her partiality for 
him had been the only cause of giving her a 
serious thought. It is a new circumstance in 
romance, I acknowledge, and dreadfully derog- 
atory of an heroine's dignity, but if it is as new 
in common life, the credit of a wild imagination 
will be all my own." 

But lest we think that Miss Austen is assert- 
ing a rule that women take the initiative in 
this matter of love and marriage, it is well to 
remember that Darcy first loved Elizabeth 
Bennet, and forced her to acknowledge his 
worth, and that Colonel Brandon married a 
young lady who had formerly supposed him at 
the advanced age of thirty-five to be occupied 
with thoughts of death rather than of love. 

And Mr. Knightley is another hero who fell 
in love and waited patiently for its return. 
Emma is like Marianne in one respect, she 
needed guidance. Almost from childhood the 
mistress of her father's house and the first 
lady in the society of Highbury, she was threat- 
ened by two evils, "the power of having too 
much her own way, and a disposition to think 
a little too well of herself." Mr. Knightley, 
the elder brother of her elder sister's husband, 
is the only person that sees that she is not al- 
ways wise and that she is sometimes selfish. He 
it 



162 Woman's Work in Fiction 

is the only one that chides her. Emma is inter- 
ested in promoting the welfare of all about her, 
but she lacks that most feminine quality of 
insight, so that her well-meant help, as in the 
case of her protegee, poor Harriet Smith, is 
sometimes productive of evil. And yet Emma 
is brave and self-forgetful. Not until she has 
schooled herself to think of Mr. Knightley as 
married to Harriet, is she aware how much he is 
a part of her own life. But this is only another 
instance of her blindness. When she learns 
that he has loved her with all her faults ever 
since she was thirteen, she is very happy. There 
is no tumultuous passion in this union, but we 
are assured of a love that will abide through the 
years. 

In Mansfield Park and in Persuasion, there is 
another variety of the old story. Fanny Price 
and Anne Elliot, the one the daughter of a poor 
lieutenant of marines, whose family is the most 
ill-bred in all Miss Austen's books, the other 
the neglected daughter of Sir Walter Elliot, 
Baronet, have more in common than any other 
of her heroines. Although these stories are 
different, yet in each it is the devotion of the 
heroine that guides the course of love through 
many obstacles into a quiet haven. Who that 
reads their story will say that Miss Austen's 
maidens are without passion? They do not 
analyse their feelings, nor do they pour them 



Jane Austen 163 

forth in wild soliloquy. But the heart of each 
is clearly revealed through little acts and 
expressions. Fanny Price, cherishing a love 
for Edmund Bertram, who was kind to her 
when she was neglected by everybody else, re- 
fuses to marry the rich, handsome, and brilliant 
Mr. Crawford, although she herself is penniless. 
We feel her misery as she realises that she is 
nothing but a friend to Edmund and rejoice 
with her when her love awakens a response. 
Anne Elliot, the gentlest of all her heroines, 
who in obedience to her father has broken her 
engagement to Captain Wentworth eight years 
before, when she is again thrown into his com- 
pany, observes his every expression, and grows 
sad and weak in health at his studied neglect. 
Other heroines have said more, but none have 
felt more than Miss Austen's. Anne Elliot her- 
self has spoken for them: 

"All the privilege I claim for my own sex 
(it is not a very enviable one) is that of loving 
longest, when existence, or when hope, is gone." 

But Jane Austen, like Shakespeare, is a dram- 
atist. So, lest this be taken for Miss Austen's 
opinion, Captain Wentworth has the last word 
here when he writes to Anne, "Dare not say 
that man forgets sooner than woman, that his 
love has an earlier death. Unjust I have been, 
weak and resentful I have been, but never 
inconstant." 



164 Woman's Work in Fiction 

And so, at the close of these novels, two more 
happy homes are added to those of rural England. 

Are there many heroes and heroines for whom 
we dare predict a happy married life? Would 
Mr. B. and Pamela have written such long let- 
ters to each other about the training of their 
children if conversation had not been a bore? 
Evelina must have been disappointed to dis- 
cover that Lord Orville lived on roast beef, 
plum-pudding, and port wine instead of music 
and poetry. Of all Scott's heroes and heroines 
none had sacrificed more for each other than 
Ivanhoe and Rowena; he gave up Rotherwood, 
and, as a disinherited son, sought forgetfulness 
of her charms in distant Palestine; she put 
aside all hopes of becoming a Saxon queen, and 
was true to the gallant son of Cedric. Yet we 
have Thackeray for authority that they were 
not only unhappy, but often quarrelled after 
Scott left them at the altar. And none of 
Thackeray's marriages turned out well, although 
Becky Sharp made Rodney Crawley very happy 
until he discovered her wiles. Dickens was 
perhaps more fortunate, but David was led 
away by the cunning ways of Dora before he 
discovered a companion and helpmate in Agnes, 
a heroine worthy to be placed beside Elizabeth 
and Jane Bennet. George Eliot's books and 
those of later novelists are rather a warning 
than an incentive to matrimony. Have all 



Jane Austen 165 

our* sighs and tears over the mishaps of ill- 
starred lovers been in vain, and is it true that 
when the curtain falls at the wedding it is only 
to shut from view a scene of domestic infelicity? 
Not so with Jane Austen. She is the queen 
of match-makers. The marriages brought about 
by her guidance give a belief in the permanency 
of English home life, quite as necessary for 
the welfare of the kingdom as the stability of 
Magna Charta. Her heroes have qualities that 
wear well, and her heroines might have inspired 
Wordsworth's lines: 

A creature not too bright or good 

For human nature's daily food, 

For transient sorrows, simple wiles, 

Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles. 

Besides the lovers, many diverting people 
lived in these homes of the gentry, quite as 
amusing as any of the peasants who were 
brought upon the stage by the older dramatists 
for our entertainment; perhaps more amusing, 
because of their self-sufficiency. These people 
seldom do anything that is peculiar, nor are 
they the objects of practical jokes, as were so 
many men and women in the earlier books; but 
they talk freely both at home and abroad about 
whatever is of interest to them. They seldom 
use stereotyped words or phrases, yet their 
conversation is a crystal from which the whole 
mental horizon of the speaker shines forth. 



1 66 Woman's Work in Fiction 

When Mrs. Bennet learns that Netherfield Park 
has been let to a single gentleman of fortune, 
her first exclamation comes from the heart — 
"What a fine thing for our girls!" After Mr. 
Collins, upon whom Mr. Bennet's estate is en- 
tailed, has resolved to make all possible amends 
to his daughters by marrying one of them, and 
is making his famous proposal to Elizabeth, he 
says with solemn composure: "But, before I 
am run away with by my feelings on this subject, 
perhaps it would be advisable for me to state 
my reasons for marrying — and, moreover, for 
coming into Hertfordshire with the design of 
selecting a wife, as I certainly did." No won- 
der Elizabeth laughed at such a lover. Mr. 
Collins is the same type of man as Mr. Smith, 
whom Evelina meets at Snow Hill, but infinitely 
more ridiculous because he is an educated man 
of some attainments. 

Then there is Mr. W T oodhouse, the father of 
Emma, with his constant solicitude for every- 
body's health and his fears that they may have 
indigestion. When his daughter and her family 
arrive from London, all well and hearty, he 
says by way of hospitality: "You and I will 
have a nice basin of gruel together. My dear 
Emma, suppose we all have a basin of gruel." 
His friend Mrs. Bates is always voluble. She 
is describing Mr. Dixon's country seat in Ireland 
to Emma: "Jane has heard a great deal of its 



Jane Austen 167 

beauty — from Mr. Dixon, I mean — I do not 
know that she ever heard about it from anybody- 
else — but it was very natural, you know, that 
he should like to speak of his own place while 
he was paying his addresses — and as Jane used 
to be very often walking out with them — for 
Colonel and Mrs. Campbell were very particular 
about their daughter's not walking out often 
with only Mr. Dixon, for which I do not at all 
blame them; of course she heard everything he 
might be telling Miss Campbell about his own 
home in Ireland." One respects the mental 
power of a woman who could remember the 
main thread of her discourse amid so many 
digressions. 

How characteristic is Sir Walter Elliot's reply 
to the gentleman who is trying to bring a neigh- 
bour's name to his mind. "Wentworth? Oh, 
ay! Mr. Wentworth, the curate of Monkford. 
You misled me by the term Gentleman. I 
thought you were speaking of some man of 
property. " And not the least amusing of these 
people is Mr. Elton's bride, a pert sort of wo- 
man who for some reason patronises every- 
body into whose company she is thrown. After 
meeting Mr. Knightley, by far the most conse- 
quential person about Highbury, she expresses 
her approval of him to Emma: " Knightley is 
quite the gentleman! I like him very much! 
Decidedly, I think, a very gentlemanlike man." 



1 68 Woman's Work in Fiction 

And Emma wonders if Mr. Knightley has been 
able to pronounce this self-important new- 
comer as quite the lady. Pick out almost any 
speech at random, and anyone who is at all 
familiar with Miss Austen will easily recognise 
the speaker. 

This ability to describe people by such deli- 
cate touches has been highly praised by Ma- 
caulay in the essay on Madame D'Arblay before 
quoted. He thus compares Jane Austen with 
Shakespeare : 

"Admirable as he [Shakespeare] was in all 
parts of his art, we must admire him for this, 
that, while he has left us a greater number of 
striking portraits than all other dramatists 
put together, he has scarcely left us a single 
caricature. Shakespeare has had neither equal 
nor second. But among the writers who, in 
the point which we have mentioned, have ap- 
proached nearest to the manner of the great 
master, we have no hesitation in placing Jane 
Austen, a woman of whom England is justly 
proud. She has given us a multitude of char- 
acters, all, in a certain sense, commonplace, all 
such as we meet every day. Yet they are all 
as perfectly discriminated from each other 
as if they were the most eccentric of human 
beings. There are, for instance, four clergy- 
men, none of whom we should be surprised 
to find in any parsonage in the kingdom, Mr. 



Jane Austen 169 

Edward Ferrars, Mr. Henry Tilney, Mr. Ed- 
mund Bertram, and Mr. Elton. They are all 
specimens of the upper part of the middle 
class. They have all been liberally educated. 
They all lie under the restraints of the same 
sacred profession. They are all young. They 
are all in love. Not one of them has any hobby- 
horse, to use the phrase of Sterne. Not one 
has a ruling passion, such as we read of in Pope. 
Who would not have expected them to be in- 
sipid likenesses of each other? No such thing. 
Harpagon is not more unlike to Jourdain, 
Joseph Surface is not more unlike to Sir Lucius 
O'Trigger, than every one of Miss Austen's 
young divines to his reverend brethren. And 
almost all this is done by touches so delicate 
that they elude analysis, that they defy the 
powers of description, and that we know them 
to exist only by the general effect to which they 
have contributed." 

Like Shakespeare Jane Austen knew the 
inner nature by intuition, and had learned its 
outward expression by observation. Character 
not only affects the speech of each one of her 
men and women, but determines their destiny 
and shapes the plot of the story. The class she 
has chosen to represent is the least under the 
sway of circumstances of any in England. 
With money for all needs, and leisure for enjoy- 
ment, free from obligations which pertain to 



170 Woman's Work in Fiction 

higher rank, character here develops freely and 
naturally. Not one of the matchmaking men 
or women, not even the intelligent Emma, suc- 
ceeds in changing the life of those whom they 
attempt to influence. Character is stronger 
than any outside agency. In this respect, Jane 
Austen is decidedly at variance with Thomas 
Hardy or Tolstoi, but she is at one with 
Shakespeare. 

In the opening paragraph of each book, 
character begins to assert itself. If Darcy 
had been without pride, and Elizabeth had 
been without prejudice; if Marianne had had 
her sensibilities under control ; if Emma had not 
been blind; if Captain Wentworth had not 
been unjust and resentful — there would have 
been no story to tell, the course of true love 
would have run so smooth. But all of them 
are loving and faithful, and these qualities in 
the end conquer, and bring the stories to a 
happy conclusion. 

Edmund Gosse thus writes of her delineation 
of character: 

"Like Balzac, like Tourgenieff at his best, 
Jane Austen gives the reader an impression of 
knowing everything there was to know about 
her creations, of being incapable of error as to 
their acts, thoughts, or emotions. She presents 
an absolute illusion of reality; she exhibits an 
art so consummate that we mistake it for 



Jane Austen 171 

nature. She never mixes her own temperament 
with those of her characters, she is never swayed 
by them, she never loses for a moment her 
perfect, serene control of them. Among the 
creators of the world, Jane Austen takes a place 
that is with the highest and that is purely her 
own." 

This seeming control of her characters is due 
largely to the fact that whatever happens to 
them is just what might have been expected. 
This is particularly true of the bad people she 
has created. Innocence led astray has been a 
popular means of exciting interest ever since 
Richardson told the sad story of Clarissa Har- 
lowe. But there is no such incident in Jane 
Austen's books. Lydia, who has n't a thought 
for anybody nor anything but a red-coat, and 
Wickham, who elopes with her without any 
intention of matrimony, are properly punished, 
by being married to each other, and the future 
unhappiness which must be their lot is due to 
their own natures. Willoughby had seduced 
one girl, trifled with the affections of another, 
and married an heiress, but he finds only misery, 
and sadly says : " I must rub through the world 
as well as I can." Henry Crawford, and his 
sister, with so much that is good in their natures, 
yet with a lack of moral fibre, are both unhappy. 
Each has lost the one they respected and loved 
and might have married. With what wit she 



172 Woman's Work in Fiction 

leaves William Elliot, the all-agreeable man, 
the heir of Sir Walter, who, that he may keep 
the latter single, has enticed the scheming Mrs. 
Clay from his home: 

"And it is now a doubtful point whether his 
cunning or hers may finally carry the day; 
whether, after preventing her from being the 
wife of Sir Walter, he may not be wheedled 
and caressed at last into making her the wife 
of Sir William. " 

And so punishment is meted out with that 
nicety of judgment which distinguishes every 
detail of her novels. 

But Jane Austen has little interest in immor- 
ality. "Let other pens dwell on guilt and 
misery; I quit such odious subjects as soon as 
I can," she says in Mansfield Park. And her 
readers have observed that deeds of evil take 
place off the stage, while she records only what 
is reported of them in the drawing-room. 

She dwells as little on misery as on guilt. She 
shows in her letters charitable regard for the 
poor people of Steventon and Chawton. She 
describes minutely the unkempt house of 
Lieutenant Price at Portsmouth with its in- 
cessant noise of heavy steps, banging doors, 
and untrained servants, where every voice was 
loud excepting Mrs. Price's, which resembled 
"the soft monotony of Lady Bertram's, only 
worn into fretfulness. " Miss Austen's pen was 



Jane Austen 173 

able to portray scenes of squalor and vice; 
she chose to turn from them. Perhaps she felt 
instinctively that true aesthetic pleasure can- 
not be produced by dwelling on a scene in a 
book which would be repulsive to the eye. 
Miss Austen wrote before there was much 
serious interest in the lives of the poor. Their 
only function in literature had been to provoke 
laughter. The sensitive daughter of the rector 
of Steventon may have felt, as others have, 
that there was no occasion to laugh at the 
blunders and ill-manners of peasants, which 
were proper and natural to their condition of 
life. She did not need these people to entertain 
us. There were quite as funny people in the 
hall as in the cottage, funnier, even, because 
their humorous sayings spring from a humorous 
twist in their natures, not from ignorance. 

Sir Walter Scott, after reading Pride and 
Prejudice for the third time, said: 

"That young lady had a talent for describing 
the involvements and feelings and characters 
of ordinary life, which is to me the most won- 
derful I ever met with. The Big Bow-wow 
strain I can do myself, like any now going; but 
the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary 
commonplace things and characters interesting 
from the truth of the description and the senti- 
ment, is denied to me." 

Sir Walter Scott proved the truth of the above 



174 Woman's Work in Fiction 

statement in St. Ronan's Well, one of the least 
successful of his novels, which was written in 
imitation of Jane Austen. 

Because Jane Austen confined her work so 
closely to ordinary middle-class people, she has 
been called narrow. But if we judge men and 
women not by dress and manners, but by what 
they are, these people furnish as broad a view 
of humanity as could be obtained by travelling 
up and down the world. A trained botanist 
will gather an herbarium from a country lane 
that will give a more extended knowledge of 
botany than a less skilful one could get by 
travelling through the woods and fields of a 
continent. Very few novelists have portrayed 
greater varieties of human nature than Miss 
Austen. 

Jane Austen's style has been praised by all 
critics. George William Curtis wrote of her 
art : 

"She writes wholly as an artist, while George 
Eliot advocates views, and Miss Bronte's fiery 
page is often a personal protest. In Miss Austen, 
on the other hand, there is in kind, but infinitely 
less in degree, the same clear atmosphere of 
pure art which we perceive in Shakespeare and 
Goethe." 

While Miss Austen has been so often likened 
to Shakespeare, she is in no sense a roman- 
tic writer. She belongs purely to the classic 



Jane Austen 175 

school. She has the restraint, the perfect poise 
of the Greeks. She recognises everywhere the 
need of law. She accepts society as it exists 
under the restraints of law and religion. She 
no more questioned the English prayer book 
and the English constitution than Homer ques- 
tioned the existence of the gods and the supreme 
power of kings. This feeling for law shaped 
her art. Her plots are perfectly symmetrical. 
There is no redundancy in expression. There 
is none of that wild luxuriance in fancy or ex- 
pression so common in romanticism. Each 
word used is needed in the sentence, and is in 
its proper place. The strength of romanticism 
lies in its impetuosity ; the strength of classicism 
lies in its self-control. This is the strength of 
Jane Austen. 

Emotion in her books is so restrained that 
the superficial reader doubts its existence. 
Yet her characters feel deeply and are sensitive 
to the acts and words of those about them. 
Although their feelings are under control, they 
are none the less real. The reader watches, but 
is not asked to participate in their griefs. 

As she never moves to tears, neither does she 
provoke laughter, but she lightens every page 
with a quiet glow of humour. Humour was as 
natural to her as to Elizabeth Bennet, whose 
sayings give the sparkle to Pride and Prejudice. 
Much of the humour in her letters consists of an 



176 Woman's Work in Fiction 

unexpected turn to a sentence or an incon- 
gruous combination of words. She writes of 
meeting "Dr. Hall in such very deep mourning 
that either his mother, his wife or himself must 
be dead." She announces the marriage of a 
gentleman to a widow by the laconic message, 
"Dr. Gardiner was married yesterday to Mrs. 
Percy and her three daughters." And again 
she says that a certain Mrs. Blount appeared 
the same as in September, "with the same broad 
face, diamond bandeau, white shoes, pink 
husband, and fat neck." She sees through the 
affectations of society and observes the pleasure 
afforded by the small misfortunes of another as 
plainly as did Thackeray later. The wife of a 
certain gentleman is discovered "to be every- 
thing the neighbourhood could wish, silly and 
cross as well as extravagant." She finds con- 
tinual source of enjoyment in people's foibles, 
and thinks that her own misfortunes ought to 
furnish jokes to her acquaintances, or she will 
die in their debt for entertainment. 

In a less refined degree, this was the view of 
life of Miss Burney, her favourite author. Miss 
Austen was but three years old when Evelina 
made her debut at Ranelagh, and not over 
seven when Cecilia visited her three guardians 
in London: Camilla was published in the year 
that it is thought that Miss Austen began Pride 
and Prejudice. During these years, Miss Bur- 



Jane Austen 177 

ney's fame was undimmed. Consider yourself 
for a moment in a circulating library, in the 
year 1797 or 1798, suppose you are fond of 
novel reading, and have moreover the refined 
tastes of Miss Austen; you will find there no 
novelist who can hold a rival place to Miss 
Burney. Miss Austen refers to her both in her 
novels and letters. In only one passage in her 
novels has she interrupted her story to express 
a general opinion ; that is in Northanger Abbey, 
where she praises the art of the novelist, and 
refers particularly to Cecilia, Camilla, and 
Belinda. In the same novel John Thorpe's lack 
of taste is emphasised by his calling Camilla 
a stupid book of unnatural stuff, which he could 
not get through. She evidently discussed Miss 
Burney 's novels with the people she met; a 
certain young man just entered at Oxford has 
heard that Evelina was written by Dr. Johnson, 
and she finds two traits in a certain Miss Fletcher 
very pleasing: " She admires Camilla, and drinks 
no cream in her tea. " But Miss Austen was no 
blind disciple of Miss Burney. All the odd 
characters which Miss Burney culled from the 
lower ranks of society were swept away by 
Miss Austen. Everything approaching tragedy 
or the improbable is avoided, but what is left 
is amplified and refined until there is no more 
trace of Miss Burney than there is of Perugino 
in the paintings of Raphael. 



178 Woman's Work in Fiction 

Artists in other lines have striven in their 
work for a unified whole. Most novelists have 
been more intent on pointing a moral or pro- 
ducing a sensation than on the technique of 
their writing. Their works as a whole lack 
proportion. They obtrude unnecessarily in one 
part and are weak in another. Miss Austen 
wrote because the characters in her brain de- 
manded expression. Who could remain silent 
with Elizabeth Bennet urging her to utterance? 
She wrote with the greatest care because she 
could do nothing slovenly. Whatever place 
may be assigned to her as the years go by, her 
novels surpass all others written in English in 
their perfect art. 

Miss Austen's genius was but slowly recog- 
nised. Her first books were published in 181 1, 
only three years before Waverley, and her last 
novels were published after it. Who will lin- 
ger over the teacups while knights in armour 
are riding the streets without? It is not until 
the cavalcade has passed that home seems again 
a quiet, refreshing spot. So the public, tired 
of the brilliant scenes and conflicting passions 
of other novels, has in the last few years turned 
back to the simple, wholesome stories of Jane 
Austen. 



CHAPTER XI 

Miss Ferrier. Miss Mitford. 
Anna Maria Hall 

WALTER SCOTT, the most chivalrous of 
all writers, brought to an end woman's 
supremacy in the novel, in 1 814. At this time 
prose fiction was far different from what it was 
in 1772, when Tobias Smollet died, and much 
of this difference was due to women. Professor 
Masson, in his lectures on the novel, gives the 
names of twenty novelists who wrote between 
1 789-1814 who are remembered in the history 
of English literature. "With the exception of 
Godwin," he writes, "I do not know that any 
of the male novelists I have mentioned could 
be put in comparison, in respect of genuine 
merit, with such novelists of the other sex as 
Mrs. Radcliffe, Miss Edgeworth, and Miss Aus- 
ten. " It is equally worthy of note that, of the 
twenty names given, fourteen are women. 

Although during these years women had de- 
veloped the historical novel, and had brought the 
novel of mystery to a high degree of perfection, 

179 



180 Woman's Work in Fiction 

they left the most enduring stamp on literature 
as realists, as painters of everyday life and com- 
monplace people. Francis Jeffrey wrote: 

"It required almost the same courage to get 
rid of the jargon of fashionable life and the 
swarms of peers, foundlings, and seducers, that 
infested our modern fables as it did in those 
days to sweep away the mythological persons of 
antiquity, and to introduce characters who 
spoke and acted like those who were to peruse 
their adventures." 

Women awakened interest in the humdrum 
lives of their neighbours next door, and this 
without any exaggeration, simply by minute 
attention to little things, and quick sympathy 
in the joys and sorrows of others. They de- 
scribed manners and customs; their view of 
life was largely objective. It is a noteworthy 
fact that while Scott was casting over all Europe 
the light of romanticism, the women writers of 
the time, with but one or two exceptions, were 
viewing life with the clear vision of Miss Edge- 
worth and Miss Austen, as if the world obtruded 
too glaringly upon their eyes to be lost sight 
of in happy day-dreams. 

Susan Edmonstone Ferrier is better known 
to-day as the friend of Scott, and an occasional 
visitor at Abbotsford, than as a successful 
novelist. She was born at Edinburgh in 1782, 



Miss Ferrier 181 

where her father, James Ferrier, was Writer to the 
Signet, and at one time Clerk of Session, Scott 
being one of his colleagues. That great genius 
was one of the earliest to appreciate the excel- 
lence of her descriptions of Scottish life given in 
her first book, entitled Marriage, published 
anonymously in 1818. In the conclusion of the 
Tales of my Landlord he paid the unknown 
writer this graceful tribute: 

"There remains behind not only a large har- 
vest, but labourers capable of gathering it in; 
more than one writer has of late displayed 
talents of this description, and if the present 
author, himself a phantom, may be permitted to 
distinguish a brother, or perhaps a sister, shadow, 
he would mention in particular the author of the 
very lively work entitled Marriage." 

Miss Ferrier wrote but three novels, Marriage, 
The Inheritance, and Destiny, a period of six 
years intervening between the appearance of 
each of them. Like Miss Burney and Miss 
Edgeworth she depicts two grades of society. 
She shows forth the fashionable life of Edin- 
burgh and London, and the cruder mode of 
living found in the Scottish Highlands. But 
between her and her models there is the great 
difference of genius and talent. They passed 
what they had seen through the alembic of 
imagination; she has depicted what she saw 
with the faithfulness of the camera, and the 



1 82 Woman's Work in Fiction 

crude realism of these scenes does not always 
blend with the warp and woof of the story. 

Like Miss Edgeworth, Miss Ferrier had a 
moral to work out. She treats society as a 
satirist, and lays bare its heartlessness, and 
the unhappiness of its members who to escape 
ennui are led hither and thither by the caprice 
of the moment. While she may present one side 
of the picture, one hesitates to accept Lady 
Juliana, Mrs. St. Clair, or Lady Elizabeth as 
common types of a London drawing-room. 

Her plots as well as her characters suffer from 
this conscious attempt to teach the happiness 
that must follow the practice of the Christian 
virtues. In Marriage there are two complete 
stories. Lady Juliana is the heroine of the 
first part; her two daughters, who are born in 
the first half, supplant their mother as heroines 
of the second half. The plot of Destiny is not 
much better. The denouement is tame, and 
the characters lack consistency. The Inherit- 
ance has the strongest plot of the three; but 
Mrs. St. Clair and her secret interviews with 
the monstrosity Lewiston, who, by the way, 
has the honour to be an American, throw an 
air of unreality over a story in many respects 
intensely real. In this story, as in so many old 
novels, the nurse's daughter had been brought 
up as the rightful heiress. The scene in which 
she tells her betrothed lover, the heir of the 



Miss Ferrier 183 

estate, the story of her birth, which she had just 
learned, is said to have suggested to Tennyson 
the beautiful ballad of Lady Clare. 

But when Miss Ferrier sees loom in imagina- 
tion the sombre purple hills of the Highlands, 
with the black tarns in the hollows half-hidden 
in mist, her genius awakes. If she had devoted 
herself to these people and this region, and 
ignored the fashionable life of the cities, she 
might have written a book worthy to be placed 
beside the best of Miss Edgeworth or Miss 
Mitford. At the time she wrote, the Highland 
chief no longer summoned his clan about him 
at a blast from his bugle, but he had lost little 
of his old-time picturesqueness. The opening 
of Destiny describes the wealth of the chief of 
Glenroy : 

"All the world knows that there is nothing on 
earth to be compared to a Highland chief. He 
has his loch and his islands, his mountains and 
his castle, his piper and his tartan, his forests 
and his deer, his thousands of acres of untrodden 
heath, and his tens of thousands of black-faced 
sheep, and his bands of bonneted clansmen, 
with claymores and Gaelic, and hot blood and 
dirks." 

But Miss Ferrier also depicted a more sordid 
type of Highlander. Christopher North in his 
Nodes AmbrosiancB writes of her novels: 

"They are the works of a very clever woman, 



184 Woman's Work in Fiction 

sir, and they have one feature of true and mel- 
ancholy interest quite peculiar to themselves. 
It is in them alone that the ultimate breaking- 
down and debasement of the Highland character 
has been depicted. Sir Walter Scott had fixed 
the enamel of genius over the last fitful gleams 
of their half-savage chivalry, but a humbler and 
sadder scene — the age of lucre-banished clans, 
— of chieftains dwindled into imitation squires, 
and of chiefs content to barter the recollections 
of a thousand years for a few gaudy seasons 
of Almacks and Crockfords, the euthanasia of 
kilted aldermen and steamboat pibrochs, was 
reserved for Miss Ferrier. " 

Besides her descriptions of the Highlands, 
Miss Ferrier has drawn several Scotch char- 
acters that deserve to live. What a delightful 
group is described in Marriage, consisting of the 
three Misses Douglas, known as "The girls," 
and their friend Mrs. Maclaughlan! Miss 
Jacky Douglas, the senior of the trio, "was 
reckoned a woman of sense"; Miss Grizzy was 
distinguished by her good-nature and the en- 
tanglement of her thoughts; and it was said 
that Miss Nicky was "not wanting for sense 
either"; while their friend Lady Maclaughlan 
loved and tyrannised over all three of them. 
Sir Walter Scott admired the character of 
Miss Becky Duguid, a poor old maid, who 
"was expected to attend all accouchements, 



Miss Ferrier 185 

christenings, deaths, chestings, and burials, but 
she was seldom asked to a marriage, and never 
to any party of pleasure." Joanna Baillie 
thought the loud-spoken minister, M'Dow, a 
true representative of a few of the Scotch clergy 
whose only aim is preferment and good cheer. 
But none of her other characters can compare 
with the devoted Mrs. Molly Macaulay, the 
friend of the Chief of Glenroy in Destiny. When 
Glenroy has an attack of palsy, she hurries to 
him, and when she is told that he has missed 
her, she exclaims with perfect self-f orgetf ulness : 

"Deed, and I thought he would do that, 
for he has always been so kind to me, — and 
I thought sometimes when I was away, oh, 
thinks I to myself, I wonder what Glenroy will 
do for somebody to be angry with, — for Ben- 
bowie 's grown so deaf, poor creature, it 's not 
worth his while to be angry at him, — and you 're 
so gentle that it would not do for him to be 
angry at you ; but I 'm sure he has a good right 
to be angry at me, considering how kind he 
has always been to me." 

Christopher North said of Molly Macaulay, 
" No sinner of our gender could have adequately 
filled up the outline." 

George Saintsbury, considering the permanent 
value of Miss Ferrier's work, wrote for the 
Fortnightly Review in 1882: 

"Of the four requisites of the novelist, plot, 



1 86 Woman's Work in Fiction 

character, description, and dialogue, she is only- 
weak in the first. The lapse of an entire half- 
century and a complete change of manners 
have put her books to the hardest test they are 
ever likely to have to endure, and they come 
through it triumphantly." 

But, besides the excellences mentioned by 
Mr. Saintsbury, Miss Ferrier is master of humour 
and pathos. No story is sadder than that of 
Ronald Malcolm, the hero of Destiny. He had 
been willed the castle of Inch Orran with its 
vast estates, but with the provision that he was 
to have no benefit from it until his twenty-sixth 
year. In case of his death the property was 
to go to his father, an upright but poor man. 
As Ronald had many years to wait before he 
could enjoy his riches, he entered the navy. His 
ship was lost at sea and the news of his death 
reported in Scotland. But Ronald had been 
rescued from the sinking ship, and returned to 
his father's cottage. Here he met a purblind 
old woman, who told him how his father, Captain 
Malcolm, had moved to the castle, and what 
good he was doing among his tenantry. She 
described the sorrow of the people at the death 
of Ronald, but added: M Och! it was God's 
providence to tak' the boy out of his worthy 
father's way; and noo a' thing 's as it should be, 
and he has gotten his ain, honest man; and long, 
long may he enjoy it!" And then she said 



Miss Ferrier 187 

thankfully, "The poor lad's death was a great 
blessing — och ay, 'deed was.'t." The scene 
where Ronald goes to the castle and looks in at 
the window upon the happy family group, con- 
sisting of his father and mother, brothers and 
sisters, resembles in many particulars the sad 
return of Enoch Arden. The close of the scene 
is as touching in the novel as in the poem: 
"Yes, yes, they are happy, and I am forgotten!" 
sobs the lad, as he turns away. 

Miss Ferrier, however, seldom touches the 
pathetic; she is first of all a humourist. But 
there is a blending of the smiles and tears of 
human life in the delightful character of Adam 
Ramsay. Engaged as a boy to Lizzie Lundie, 
he had gone forth into the world to make a 
fortune, but when he returned after many years 
he found that she had married in his absence, 
and soon afterwards had died. Crabbed to all 
about him, he still cherished the remembrance 
of his early love, and was quickly moved by 
any appeal to her memory. 

The practical philosophy of the Scottish 
peasantry is amusingly set forth in the scene 
where Miss St. Clair visits one of the cottages 
on Lord Rossville's estate. She found the 
goodman very ill, and everything about the 
room betokening extreme poverty. When she 
offered to send him milk and broth, and a carpet 
and chairs to make the room more comfortable, 



1 88 Woman's Work in Fiction 

his wife interposed, "A suit o' gude bein com- 
fortable dead claise, Tammes, wad set ye better 
than aw the braw chyres an' carpets i' the toon." 
Sometime afterward, when Miss St. Clair called 
to see how the invalid was, she found him in 
the press-bed, while the clothes were warming 
before the fire. His wife explained that she 
could not have him in the way, and if he were 
cold, it could not be helped, as the clothes had 
to be aired, and added, "An' I 'm thinkin' he '11 
no be lang o' wantin' them noo. " 

But notwithstanding her humour, Miss Ferrier 
was a stern moralist, whose attitude toward 
life had been influenced indirectly by the 
teachings of John Knox. She sometimes seems 
to stand her characters in the stocks, and call 
upon the populace to view their sins or absurd- 
ities. She seldom throws the veil of charity 
over them. Men as novelists are prone to 
exaggeration. Women have represented life 
with greater truth both in its larger aspects and 
in details. Miss Ferrier carries this quality to 
an extreme. She tells not only the truth, but, 
with almost heartless honesty, reveals the whole 
of it, so that many of her men and women are 
repugnant to the reader while they amuse him. 
The best judges of Scottish manners have borne 
witness to the exactness of her portraiture. 
She is, perhaps, an example of the artistic failure 
of over-realism. 



Miss Mitford 189 

Mary Russell Mitford like Miss Ferrier painted 
her scenes and her portraits from real life. But 
there is as wide a difference between their 
writings as between the rocky ledges of the 
Grampian Hills and the soft meadows bathed 
in the sunshine which stretch back of the cot- 
tages of Our Village. Miss Mitford's, indeed, 
was a sunny nature, not to be hardened nor 
embittered by a lifelong anxiety over poverty 
and debts. Her father, Dr. Mitford, had spent 
nearly all his own fortune when he married 
Miss Mary Russell, an heiress. Besides being 
constantly involved in lawsuits, he was addicted 
to gambling, and soon squandered the fortune 
which his wife had brought him, besides twenty 
thousand pounds won in a lottery. He is said 
to have lost in speculations and at play about 
seventy thousand pounds, at that time a large 
fortune. The authoress was a little over thirty 
years of age when the poverty of the family 
forced them to leave Bertram House, their 
home for many years, and remove to a little 
labourer's cottage about a mile away, on the 
principal street of a little village near Reading, 
known as Three Mile Cross. Here the support 
of the family devolved upon the daughter, a 
burden made harder by the continual extrava- 
gance of the father, whom she devotedly loved. 
Although she received large sums for her writ- 
ings, it is with the greatest weariness that she 



190 Woman's Work in Fiction 

writes to her friend Miss Barrett, afterwards 
Mrs. Browning, of the struggles that have been 
hers the greater part of her life, the ten or twelve 
hours of literary drudgery each day, often in 
spite of ill health, and her hope that she may 
always provide for her father his accustomed 
comforts. Not only was she enabled to do this, 
but, through the help of friends, to pay, after his 
death, the one thousand pounds indebtedness, 
his only legacy to her. 

Yet there is not a trace of this worry in the 
delightful series of papers called Our Village, 
which she began to contribute at this time to 
the Lady's Magazine. Before this she had be- 
come known as a poet and a successful play- 
wright, but had believed herself incapable of 
writing good prose. Necessity revealed her 
fine power of description, and Three Mile Cross 
furnished her with scenes and characters. 

Our Village marked a new style in fiction. 
The year it was commenced, she wrote to a 
friend : 

"With regard to novels, I should like to see 
one undertaken without any plot at all. I do 
not mean that it should have no story; but I 
should like some writer of luxuriant fancy to 
begin with a certain set of characters — one 
family, for instance — without any preconceived 
design farther than one or two incidents or 
dialogues, which would naturally suggest fresh 



Miss Mitford 191 

matter, and so proceed in this way, throw- 
ing in incidents and characters profusely, but 
avoiding all stage tricks and strong situations, 
till some death or marriage should afford a 
natural conclusion to the book. " 

Miss Mitford followed this plan as far as her 
great love of nature would permit. For when 
she found her daily cares too great to be borne 
in the little eight-by-eight living-room, she es- 
caped to the woods and fields. She loved the 
poets who wrote of nature, and next to Miss 
Austen, whom she placed far above any other 
novelist, she delighted in the novels of Charlotte 
Smith, and in her own pages there is the same 
true feeling for nature. 

Our Village follows in a few particulars Gilbert 
White's History of Selborne. As he described 
the beauties of Selborne through the varying 
seasons of the year, she describes her walks 
about Three Mile Cross, first when the meadows 
are covered with hoar frost, then when the air 
is perfumed with violets, and later when the 
harvest field is yellow with ripened corn. All 
the lanes, the favourite banks, the shady recesses 
are described with delicate and loving touch. 
How her own joyous, optimistic nature speaks 
in this record of a morning walk in a backward 
spring : 

"Cold bright weather. All within doors, 
sunny and chilly; all without, windy and dusty. 



192 Woman's Work in Fiction 

It is quite tantalising to see that brilliant sun 
careering through so beautiful a sky, and to 
feel little more warmth from his presence than 
one does from that of his fair but cold sister, 
the moon. Even the sky, beautiful as it is, has 
the look of that one sometimes sees in a very 
bright moonlight night — deeply, intensely blue, 
with white fleecy clouds driven vigorously along 
by a strong breeze, now veiling and now ex- 
posing the dazzling luminary around whom 
they sail. A beautiful sky! and, in spite of its 
coldness, a beautiful world!" 

But how naturally we meet the people of the 
village and become interested in them. There 
is Harriet, the belle of the village, "a flirt 
passive," who made the tarts and puddings 
in the author's kitchen; Joel Brent, her lover, 
a carter by calling, but, by virtue of his personal 
accomplishments, the village beau. There is 
the publican, the carpenter, the washerwoman; 
little Lizzie, the spoilt child, and all the other 
boys and girls of the village. It is very natural 
to-day to meet these poor people in novels; 
at that time the poor people of Ireland and 
Scotland had begun to creep into fiction, but 
it was as unusual in England as a novel without 
a plot. Even to-day Miss Mitford's attitude 
toward these people is not common. It seems 
never to have occurred to the author, and 
certainly does not to her readers, that these men 



Miss Mitford 193 

dressed in overalls and these women in print 
dresses with sleeves rolled to the elbow were 
not the finest ladies and gentlemen of the land. 
She greets them all with a playful humour 
which reminds one of the genial smile of Elia. 
C. H. Herford in The Age of Wordsworth wrote 
of Our Village: 

"No such intimate and sympathetic por- 
trayal of village life had been given before, and 
perhaps it needed a woman's sympathetic eye 
for little things to show the way. Of the pro- 
fessional story-teller on the alert for a sensation 
there is as little as of the professional novelist 
on the watch for a lesson. " 

Belford Regis, a series of country and town 
sketches, was written soon after the completion 
of Our Village. Here again is the happy blend- 
ing of nature and humanity; the same fusion 
of truth and fiction. As Belford Regis is 
" Our Market Town," there is a wider range of 
characters, as different classes are represented ; 
and a more intimate view, since the same people 
appear in more than one story. Stephen Lane, 
the butcher, and his wife are often met with. 
He is so fat that "when he walks, he overfills 
the pavement, and is more difficult to pass than 
a link of full-dressed misses or a chain of be- 
cloaked dandies." Of Mrs. Lane she writes: 
"Butcher's wife and butcher's daughter though 
she were, yet was she a graceful and gracious 



194 Woman's Work in Fiction 

woman, one of nature's gentlewomen in look 
and in thought." There was Miss Savage, 
"who was called a sensible woman because 
she had a gruff voice and vinegar aspect"; 
and Miss Steele, who was called literary, because 
forty years ago she made a grand poetical 
collection. Miss Mitford even does justice to 
Mrs. Hollis, the fruiterer and the village gossip: 
"There she sits, a tall, square, upright figure, 
surmounted by a pleasant, comely face, eyes 
as black as a sloe, cheeks as round as an apple, 
and a complexion as ruddy as a peach, as fine 
a specimen of a healthy, hearty English trades- 
woman, the feminine of John Bull, as one would 
desire to see on a summer's day. ... As a 
gossip she was incomparable. She knew every- 
body and everything; had always the freshest 
intelligence, and the newest news; her reports 
like her plums had the bloom on them, and 
she would as much have scorned to palm 
upon you an old piece of scandal as to send 
you strawberries that had been two days 
gathered." 

A reviewer in the Athenceum thus criticises 
the book: 

"If (to be hypercritical) the pictures they 
contain be a trifle too sunny and too cheerful to 
be real — if they show more generosity and 
refinement and self-sacrifice existing among 
the middle classes than does exist, — too much 



Miss Mitford 195 

of the meek beauty, too little of the squalidity 
of humble life, — we love them none the less, 
and their authoress all the more." 

In Belford Regis we miss the fields, the brooks, 
the flowers, and the sky, which made the charm 
of Our Village. In some respects it is a more 
ambitious book, but it has not the perennial 
charm of Our Village. 

Miss Mitford's favourite author, as we have 
seen, was Jane Austen. She had the same 
regard for her that Miss Austen felt for Fanny 
Burney. The two authors have many points 
of resemblance. Both have the same clear 
vision, and sunny nature; the same repugnance 
to all that is sensational, or coarse, or low; the 
same dislike of strong pathos or broad humour; 
and Miss Mitford has approached more closely 
than any other writer to the elegance of diction 
and purity of style of Miss Austen. 

They have another point in common, they 
both show excellent taste in their writings. 
This quality of good taste is due to native deli- 
cacy and refinement, a sensitive withdrawal 
from what is ugly, and a quick feeling for true 
proportion; the very things which give to a 
woman her superior tact, which Ruskin has 
called "the touch sense." In the novel it is 
pre-eminently a feminine characteristic. Few 
men have it in a marked degree. It adds all 
the charm we feel in the presence of a refined 



196 Woman's Work in Fiction 

woman to the novels of Miss Edgeworth, Miss 
Austen, and Miss Mitford. 

But, while Miss Mitford and Miss Austen have 
many points of resemblance, they have many 
points of difference. Miss Austen liked the 
society of men and women, and during her 
younger days was fond of dinner-parties and 
balls. Miss Mitford preferred the woods and 
fields, liked the society of her dogs, and wrote 
to a friend before she was twenty that she 
would never go to another dance if she could 
help it. Miss Austen selects a small group of 
gentry, and by the intertwining of their lives 
forms a beautiful plot; Miss Mitford rambles 
through the village and the country walks of 
Three Mile Cross, and as she meets the butcher, 
the publican, the boys at cricket, she gleans 
some story of interest, and brings back to us, as 
it were, a basket in which have been thrown in 
careless profusion violets and anemones, cow- 
slips and daisies, and all the other flowers of the 
field. 

Mrs. Anna Maria Hall, a country-woman of 
Miss Edgeworth, wrote of her first novel: 
"My Sketches of Irish Character, my first dear 
book, was inspired by a desire to describe 
my native place, as Miss Mitford had done in 
Our Village, and this made me an author." 
Most of these sketches were drawn from the 



Anna Maria Hall 197 

county of Wexford, her native place, whose 
inhabitants, she says in the preface, are de- 
scendants of the Anglo-Norman settlers of the 
reign of Henry the Second, and speak a lan- 
guage unknown in other districts of Ireland. 

The book is a series of well-told stories of the 
poor people, whom we should have imagined 
to be pure Celt, if the author had not said they 
resembled the English. There is the tender 
pathos, the quick humour, the joke which often 
answers an argument, the guidance of the heart 
rather than the head; but she has dwelt upon 
one characteristic but lightly touched upon by 
Miss Edgeworth and Lady Morgan, the poetic 
feeling of the Celt, the imagery that so often 
adorns their common speech. The old Irish 
wife says to the bride who speaks disrespectfully 
of the fairies: "Hush, Avourneen! Sure they 
have the use of the May-dew before it falls, and 
the colour of the lilies and the roses before it 's 
folded in the tender buds; and can steal the 
notes out of the birds' throats while they sleep. " 

The Irish Peasantry, and Lights and Shadows 
of Irish Life, won Mrs. Hall the ill-will rather 
than the love of her countrymen. She had 
lived for a long time in England, and upon re- 
turning to her native land was impressed by the 
lack of forethought which kept the country 
poor. Their early marriages, their indifference 
to time, their frequent visits to the public house, 



198 Woman's Work in Fiction 

their hospitality to strangers even when they 
themselves were in extreme poverty and debt — 
all made so deep an impression upon her mind 
that she attempted to teach the Irish worldly 
wisdom. But the lesson was distasteful to the 
people and probably useless, as the charac- 
teristics which she would change were the very 
essence of the Irish nature, the traits which 
made him a Celt, not a Saxon. In these books, 
the wooings, weddings, and funerals are por- 
trayed, and there is a little glimpse of fairy lore. 
Midsummer Eve, a Fairy Tale of Love, grew 
out of the fairy legends of Ireland. It is said 
that a child whose father has died before its 
birth is placed by nature under the peculiar 
guardianship of the fairies; and, if born on 
Midsummer Eve, it becomes their rightful 
property; they take it to their own homes and 
leave in its place one of their changelings. The 
heroine of the story is a child of that nature, 
over whose birth the fairies of air, earth, and 
water preside. But at the will of Nightstar, 
Queen of the Fairies of the Air, she is left with 
her mother, but adopted and watched over 
by the fairies as their own. Their great gift 
to her is that of loving and being loved. The 
human element is not well blended with the 
fairy element. The entire setting should have 
been rural, for in the city of London, particularly 
in the exhibition of the Royal Academy, where 



Anna Maria Hall 



199 



part of the story is placed, it is not easy to keep 
the tranquil twilight atmosphere, which fairies 
love. The book is like a song in which the 
bass and soprano are written in different keys. 
But when we are back in Ireland, and the fairies 
again appear and disappear, it is charming. 
The old woodcutter, Randy, who sees and talks 
with the fairies, is a delightful creature, and 
gives to the story much of its beauty. 

Mrs. Hall's novels have but little literary 
value, but she has brought to light Irish charac- 
teristics and Irish traditions which were over- 
looked by her predecessors, and for that reason 
they deserve to live. 



CHAPTER XII 

Lady Caroline Lamb. Mrs. Shelley 

IT is impossible to comprehend the Byronic 
craze which swept cool-headed England 
off her feet during the regency. Childe Harold 
was the fashion, and many a hero of romance, 
even down to the time of Pendennis, aped his 
fashions. Disraeli and Bulwer were among 
his disciples. Bulwer's early novels, Falkland 
and Pelham.. were influenced by him; and 
Vivian Grey and Venetia might have been the 
offspring of Byron's prose brain, so completely 
was Disraeli under his influence at the time. 

The poorest of the novels of this class, but 
the one which gives the most intimate picture 
of Byron, is Glenarvon, by Lady Caroline Lamb. 
Its hero is Byron. The plot follows the outlines 
of her own life, and all the characters were 
counterparts of living people whom she knew. 
Calantha, the heroine, representing Lady Caro- 
line, is married to Lord Avondale, or William 
Lamb, better known as Lord Melbourne, at 
one time Premier of England. Lord and Lady 
Avondale are very happy, until Glenarvon, 
200 



Lady Caroline Lamb 



20I 



"the spirit of evil," appears and dazzles Calan- 
tha. Twice she is about to elope with him, 
but the thought of her husband and children 
keeps her back. They part, and for a time 
tender billets-doux pass between them, until 
Calantha receives a cruel letter from Glenarvon, 
in which he bids her leave him in peace. Other 
well-known people appeared in the book. Lord 
Holland was the Great Nabob, Lady Holland 
was the Princess of Madagascar, and Samuel 
Rogers was the Yellow Hyena or the Pale Poet. 
The novel had also a moral purpose; it was 
intended to show the danger of a life devoted 
to pleasure and fashion. 

Of course the book made a sensation. Lady 
Caroline Lamb, the daughter of Earl Bessbor- 
ough, the granddaughter of Earl Spencer, re- 
lated to nearly all the great houses of England, 
had all her life followed every impulse of a too 
susceptible imagination. Her infatuation for 
Lord Byron had long been a theme for gossip 
throughout London. She invited him con- 
stantly to her home; went to assemblies in his 
carriage; and, if he were invited to parties to 
which she was not, walked the streets to meet 
him; she confided to every chance acquaint- 
ance that she was dying of love for him. Yet, 
as one reads of this affair, one suspects that this 
devotion was nothing more than the infatua- 
tion of a high-strung nature for the hero of a 



202 Woman's Work in Fiction 

romance. In writing to a friend about her 
husband, she says, "He was privy to my affair 
with Lord Byron and laughed at it." On her 
death-bed she said of her husband, ''But re- 
member, the only noble fellow I ever met with 
was William Lamb. " 

A month after her death, Lord Melbourne 
wrote a sketch of her life for the Literary Ga- 
zette. In this he said: 

"Her character it is difficult to analyse, 
because, owing to the extreme susceptibility 
of her imagination, and the unhesitating and 
rapid manner in which she followed its impulses, 
her conduct was one perpetual kaleidoscope of 
changes. ... To the poor she was invariably 
charitable — she was more: in spite of her ordi- 
nary thoughtlessness of self, for them she had 
consideration as well as generosity, and delicacy 
no less than relief. For her friends she had a 
ready and active love ; for her enemies no hatred : 
never perhaps was there a human being who had 
less malevolence; as all her errors hurt only 
herself, so against herself only were levelled her 
accusation and reproach." 

How far Byron was in earnest in this tragi- 
comedy is more difficult to determine. In one 
letter to her he writes: "I was and am yours, 
freely and entirely, to obey, to honour, to love, 
and fly with you, where, when, and how your- 
self might and may determine." That Byron 



Lady Caroline Lamb 203 

was piqued when he read the book, his letter to 
Moore proves: "By the way, I suppose you 
have seen Glenarvon. It seems to me if the 
authoress had written the truth — the whole 
truth — the romance would not only have 
been more romantic, but more entertaining. 
As for the likeness, the picture can't be good; 
I did not sit long enough. " It was not pleasing 
to Lord Byron's vanity to appear in her book 
as the spirit of evil, beside her husband, a 
high-minded gentleman, ready to sacrifice for 
his friends everything "but his honour and 
integrity." 

Notwithstanding the humorous elements in 
the connection of Lord Byron and Lady Caroline 
Lamb, the story is pathetic. His poetic per- 
sonality attracted her as the light does the poor 
moth. Disraeli caricatured her in the char- 
acter of Mrs. Felix Lorraine in Vivian Grey, 
and introduced her into Venetia under the title 
of Lady Monteagle, where he made much of 
her love for the poet Cadurcis, otherwise Lord 
Byron. 

Lady Caroline Lamb wrote two other novels, 
but they are of no value. In her third, Ada 
Reis, considered her best, she introduced Bulwer 
as the good spirit. 

The little poem written by Lady Caroline 
Lamb on the day fixed for her departure from 
Brocket Hall, after it had been decided that 



204 Woman's Work in Fiction 

she was to live in retirement away from her 
husband and son, shows tenderness and poetic 
feeling: 

They dance — they sing — they bless the day, 
I weep the while — and well I may : 
Husband, nor child, to greet me come, 
Without a friend — without a home: 
I sit beneath my favourite tree, 
Sing then, my little birds, to me, 
In music, love, and liberty. 

At the time that the British public was smil- 
ing graciously, even if a little humorously, upon 
Lady Caroline Lamb, and was lionising Lord 
Byron, it spurned from its presence with the 
greatest disdain Percy and Mary Shelley. Even 
after the death of Shelley, when Mary returned 
to London with herself and son to support, it 
received her as the prodigal daughter for whom 
the crumbs from the rich man's table must 
suffice. 

Mary Shelley had inherited from her mother 
the world's frown. Mary Wollstonecraft God- 
win had been, the greater part of her life, at 
variance with society. She was the author, as 
has been said, of the Vindication of the Rights 
of Woman, and had for a long time been an 
opponent of marriage, chiefly because the civil 
laws pertaining to it deprived both husband 
and wife of their proper liberty. Her bitter 
experience with Imlay had, however, so modi- 



Mrs. Shelley 205 

fied her views on this latter subject that she 
became the wife of William Godwin a short 
time before the birth of their daughter Mary, 
who in after years became Mrs. Shelley. Al- 
though her mother died at her birth, Mary 
Godwin was deeply imbued with her theories 
of life. She had read her books, and had often 
heard her father express the same views con- 
cerning the bondage of marriage and its use- 
lessness. Her elopement with Shelley while 
his wife Harriet was still living gains a certain 
sanction from the fact that she plighted her 
troth to him at her mother's grave. After the 
sad death of Harriet, however, Shelley and 
Mary Godwin conceded to the world's opinion, 
and were legally married. But the anger of 
society was not appeased, and, even after both 
had become famous, it continued to ignore the 
poet Shelley and his gifted wife. 

At the age of nineteen Mrs. Shelley was led 
to write her first novel. Mr. and Mrs. Shelley 
and Byron were spending the summer of 181 6 
in the mountains of Switzerland. Continuous 
rain kept them in-doors, where they passed 
the time in reading ghost stories. At the sug- 
gestion of Byron, each one agreed to write a 
blood-curdling tale. It is one of the strange 
freaks of invention that this young girl suc- 
ceeded where Shelley and Byron failed. Byron 
wrote a fragment of a story which was printed 



206 Woman's Work in Fiction 

with Mazeppa. Shelley also began a story, 
but when he had reduced his characters to a 
most pitiable condition, he wearied of them and 
could devise no way to bring the tale to a fitting 
conclusion. After listening to a conversation 
between the two poets upon the possibilities of 
science discovering the secrets of life, the story 
known as Frankenstein, or the Modem Pro- 
metheus shaped itself in Mary's mind. 

Frankenstein is one of those novels that 
defy the critic. Everyone recognises that the 
letters written by Captain Walton to his sister 
in which he tells of his meeting with Franken- 
stein, and repeats to her the story he has just 
heard from his guest, makes an awkward intro- 
duction to the real narrative. Yet all this part 
about Captain Walton and his crew was added 
at the suggestion of Shelley after the rest of the 
story had been written. But the narrative of 
Frankenstein is so powerful, so real, that, once 
read, it can never be forgotten. Mrs. Shelley 
wrote in the introduction of the edition of 1839 
that, before writing it, she was trying to think 
of a story, "one that would speak to the mys- 
terious fears of our nature, and awaken thrilling 
horror — one to make the reader dread to look 
round, to curdle the blood and quicken the 
beatings of the heart." That she has done 
this the experience of every reader will prove. 
But the story has a greater hold on the 



Mrs. Shelley 207 

imagination than this alone would give it. The 
monster created by Frankenstein is closely re- 
lated to our own human nature. "My heart 
was fashioned to be susceptible of love and 
sympathy," he says, "and, when wrenched by 
misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the 
violence of the change without torture, such 
as you cannot even imagine. " There is a won- 
derful blending of good and evil in this demon, 
and, while the magnitude of his crimes makes us 
shudder, his wrongs and his loneliness awaken 
our pity. "The fallen angel becomes a malig- 
nant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and 
man had friends and associates in his desolation ; 
I am quite alone," the monster complains to his 
creator. Who can forget the scene where he 
watches Frankenstein at work making for him 
the companion that he had promised? Perhaps 
sadder than the story of the monster is that of 
Frankenstein, who, led by a desire to widen 
human knowledge, finds that the fulfilment of 
his lofty ambition has brought only a curse to 
mankind. 

In 1823, Mary Shelley published a second 
novel, Valperga, so named from a castle and 
small independent territory near Lucca. Cas- 
truccio Castracani, whose life Machiavelli has 
told, is the hero of the story. The greatest 
soldier and satirist of his times, the man of the 
novel is considered inferior to the man of 



208 Woman's Work in Fiction 

history. Mrs. Shelley had read broadly before 
beginning the book, and she has described 
minutely the customs of the age about which 
she is writing. Shelley pronounced it "a 
living and moving picture of an age almost 
forgotten." 

The interest centres in the two heroines, 
Euthanasia, Countess of Valperga, and Beatrice, 
Prophetess of Ferrara. Strong, intellectual, 
and passionate, not until the time of George 
Eliot did women of this type become prominent 
in fiction. Euthanasia, a Guelph and a Floren- 
tine, with a soul "adapted for the reception of 
all good," was betrothed to the youth Cas- 
truccio, whom she at that time loved. Later, 
when his character deteriorated under the in- 
fluence of selfish ambition, she ceased to love 
him, and said, "He cast off humanity, honesty, 
honourable feeling, all that I prize. " Castruccio 
belonged to the Ghibelines, so that the story 
of their love is intertwined with the struggle 
between these two parties in Italy. 

But more beautiful than the intellectual 
character of Euthanasia, is the spiritual one of 
Beatrice, the adopted daughter of the bishop of 
Ferrara, who is regarded with feelings of rever- 
ence by her countrymen, because of her prophetic 
powers. Pure and deeply religious, she accepted 
all the suggestions of her mind as a message from 
God. When Castruccio came to Ferrara and 



Mrs. Shelley 209 

was entertained by the bishop as the prince 
and liberator of his country, she believed that 
together they could accomplish much for her 
beloved country: "She prayed to the Virgin to 
inspire her; and, again giving herself up to 
reverie, she wove a subtle web, whose materials 
she believed heavenly, but which were indeed 
stolen from the glowing wings of love." No 
wonder she believed the dictates of her own 
heart, she whose words the superstition of the 
age had so often declared miraculous. She 
was barely seventeen and she loved for the first 
time. How pathetic is her disillusionment when 
Castruccio bade her farewell for a season, as 
he was about to leave Ferrara. She had be- 
lieved that the Holy Spirit had brought Cas- 
truccio to her that by the union of his manly 
qualities and her divine attributes some great 
work might be fulfilled. But as he left her, 
he spoke only of earthly happiness: 

"It was her heart, her whole soul she had 
given ; her understanding, her prophetic powers, 
all the little universe that with her ardent spirit 
she grasped and possessed, she had surrendered, 
fully, and without reserve; but, alas! the most 
worthless part alone had been accepted, and the 
rest cast as dust upon the winds." 

Afterwards, when she wandered forth a 
beggar, and was rescued by Euthanasia, she 
exclaimed to her; 



210 Woman's Work in Fiction 

"You either worship a useless shadow, or a 
fiend in the clothing of a God. " 

The daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft could 
fully sympathise with Beatrice. In the grief, 
almost madness, with which Beatrice realises 
her self-deception, there are traces of Franken- 
stein. Perhaps no problem plucked from the 
tree of good and evil was so ever-present to 
Mary Shelley as why misery so often follows 
an obedience to the highest dictates of the soul. 
Both her father and mother had experienced 
this; and she and Shelley had tasted of the same 
bitter fruit. In the analysis of Beatrice's emo- 
tions Mrs. Shelley shows herself akin to Charlotte 
Bronte. 

Three years after the death of Shelley, she 
published The Last Man. It relates to England 
in the year 2073 when, the king having abdicated 
his throne, England had become a republic. 
Soon after this, however a pestilence fell upon 
the people, which drove them upon the conti- 
nent, where they travelled southward, until 
only one man remained. The plot is clumsy; 
the characters are abstractions. 

But the feelings of the author, written in 
clear letters on every page, are a valuable 
addition to the history of the poet Shelley and 
his wife. Besides her fresh sorrow for her hus- 
band, Byron had died only the year before. Her 
mind was brooding on the days the three had 



Mrs. Shelley 211 

spent together. Her grief was too recent to be 
shaken from her mind or lost sight of in her imag- 
inative work. Shelley, and the scenes she had 
looked on with him, the conversations between 
him and his friends, creep in on every page. 
Lionel Verney, the Last Man, is the supposed 
narrator of the story. He thus describes Adrian, 
the son of the king: "A tall, slim, fair boy, with 
a physiognomy expressive of the excess of sensi- 
bility and refinement, stood before me; the 
morning sunbeams tinged with gold his silken 
hair, and spread light and glory over his beam- 
ing countenance ... he seemed like an inspired 
musician, who struck, with unerring skill, the 
'lyre of mind,' and produced thence divinest har- 
mony. . . . His slight frame was ovei informed 
by the soul that dwelt within. . . . He was gay as 
a lark carrolling from its skiey tower. . . . The 
young and inexperienced did not understand 
the lofty severity of his moral views, and dis- 
liked him as a being different from themselves." 
Shelley, of course, was the original of this pic- 
ture. Lord Byron suggested the character of 
Lord Raymond: "The earth was spread out as 
a highway for him; the heavens built up as a 
canopy for him." " Every trait spoke predom- 
inate self-will; his smile was pleasing, though 
disdain too often curled his lips — lips which to 
female eyes were the very throne of beauty and 
love. . . . Thus full of contradictions, unbending 



212 Woman's Work in Fiction 

yet haughty, gentle yet fierce, tender and again 
neglectful, he by some strange art found easy 
entrance to the admiration and affection of 
women; now caressing and now tyrannising 
over them according to his mood, but in every 
change a despot." 

A large part of the three volumes is taken 
up with a characterisation of Adrian and Lord 
Raymond, the latter of whom falls when fight- 
ing for the Greeks. How impossible it was for 
her to rid her mind of her own sorrow is shown 
at the end of the third volume, where Adrian 
is drowned, and Lionel Verney is left alone. 
He thus says of his friend: 

"All I had possessed of this world's goods, 
of happiness, knowledge, or virtue — I owed to 
him. He had, in his person, his intellect, and 
rare qualities, given a glory to my life, which 
without him it had never known. Beyond all 
other beings he had taught me that goodness, 
pure and simple, can be an attribute of man." 

Mrs. Shelley made the great mistake of writ- 
ing this novel in the first person. The Last 
Man, who is telling the story, although he has 
the name of Lionel, is most assuredly of the 
female sex. The friendship between him and 
Adrian is not the friendship of man for man, 
but rather the love of man and woman. 

Mrs. Shelley's next novel, Lodore, written in 
1835, thirteen years after the death of her hus- 



Mrs. Shelley 213 

band, had a better outlined plot and more defi- 
nite characters. But again it echoes the past. 
Lord Byron's unhappy married relations and 
Shelley's troubles with Harriet are blended in 
the story, Lord Byron furnishing the character 
in some respects of Lord Lodore, while his wife, 
Cornelia Santerre, resembles both Harriet and 
Lady Byron. Lady Santerre, the mother of 
Cornelia, augments the trouble between Lord 
and Lady Lodore, and, contrary to the evident 
intentions of the writer, the reader's sympathies 
are largely with Cornelia and Lady Santerre. 
When Lodore wishes Cornelia to go to America 
to save him from disgrace, Lady Santerre 
objects to her daughter's accompanying him: 

" He will soon grow tired of playing the tragic 
hero on a stage surrounded by no spectators; 
he will discover the folly of his conduct; he will 
return, and plead for forgiveness, and feel that 
he is too fortunate in a wife who has preserved 
her own conduct free from censure and remark 
while he has made himself a laughing-stock to 
all." 

These words strangely bring to mind Lord 
Byron as having evoked them. 

Again Lady Lodore 's letter to her husband 
at the time of his departure to America reminds 
one of Lady Byron: 

"If heaven have blessings for the coldly 
egotistical, the unfeeling despot, may those 



214 Woman's Work in Fiction 

blessings be yours; but do not dare to interfere 
with emotions too pure, too disinterested for 
you ever to understand. Give me my child, 
and fear neither my interference nor resent- 
ment." 

Lady Lodore's character changes in the book, 
and becomes more like that of Harriet Shelley. 
As Mrs. Shelley wrote, fragments of the past 
evidently came into her mind and influenced 
her pen, and her original conception of the 
characters was forgotten. Clorinda, the beau- 
tiful, eloquent, and passionate Neapolitan, was 
drawn from Emilia Viviani, who had suggested 
to Shelley his poem Epipsychidion, while both 
Horatio Saville, who had "no thought but for 
the nobler creations of the soul, and the dis- 
cernment of the sublime laws of God and 
nature," and his cousin Villiers, also an enthu- 
siastic worshipper of nature, possessed many of 
Shelley's qualities. 

Besides two other novels of no value, Perkin 
Warbeck and Falkner, Mrs. Shelley wrote numer- 
ous short stories for the annuals, at that time 
so much in vogue. In 1891, these were col- 
lected and edited with an appreciative criti- 
cism by Sir Richard Garnett. Many of them 
have the intensity and sustained interest of 
Frankenstein. 

After the death of her husband, grief and 
trouble dimmed Mrs. Shelley's imagination. 



Mrs. Shelley 215 

But the pale student Frankenstein, the mon- 
ster he created, and the beautiful priestess, 
Beatrice, three strong conceptions, testify to 
the genius of Mary Shelley. 



CHAPTER XIII 

Mrs. Gore. Mrs. Bray 

DURING the second decade of the nine- 
teenth century, while Scott was writing 
some of the most powerful of the Waverley 
novels, a host of new writers sprang into popu- 
lar notice. John Gait, William Harrison Ains- 
worth, and G. P. R. James began their endless 
series of historical romances, while in 1827, 
Bulwer Lytton and Benjamin Disraeli intro- 
duced to the reading public, as the represen- 
tatives of fashionable society, Falkland and 
Vivian Grey. The decade was prolific also in 
novels by women. Jane Austen had died in 1 8 1 7 , 
but Maria Edgeworth, Lady Morgan, the Por- 
ters, Amelia Opie, Miss Ferrier, Mrs. Shelley and 
Miss Mitford were still writing; during this 
period, Mrs. S. C. Hall began her work in imi- 
tation of Miss Mitford, while Mrs. Gore and 
Mrs. Bray took up the goose-quill, piled reams 
of paper on their desks, and began their literary 
careers. 

About a score of years before Thackeray 
tickled English society with pictures of its own 
216 



Mrs. Gore 217 

snobbery, Mrs. Gore, a young woman, wife of 
an officer in the Life Guards, saw through the 
many affectations of the polite world, and in a 
series of novels, pointed out its ludicrous pre- 
tences with lively wit. Mrs. Gore has suffered, 
however, from the multiplicity of her writings. 
During the years between 1823, when she wrote 
her first novel, Theresa Marchmont, and 1850, 
when, quite blind, she retired from the world of 
letters, she published two hundred volumes of 
novels, plays, and poems. Her plots are often 
hastily constructed, her men and women dimly 
outlined, but she is never dull. No writer 
since Congreve has so many sparkling lines. 
She has been likened to Horace, and if we com- 
pare her wit with that of Thackeray, who by the 
way ridiculed her in his Novels by Eminent 
Hands, her humour has qualities of old Fal- 
ernian, beside which his too frequently has the 
bitter flavour of old English beei . The English- 
man is inclined to take his wit, like his sports, 
too seriously, and to mingle with it a little of 
the spice of envy. Mrs. Gore has none of this, 
however, and skims along the surface of fashion- 
able life with a grace and ease and humour 
extremely diverting. 

Her writings are so voluminous that one can 
only make excerpts at random. One of the 
liveliest is Cecil, or the Adventures of a Coxcomb, 
a humorous satire on Vivian Grey. "The arch- 



218 Woman's Work in Fiction 

coxcomb of his coxcombical time" had become 
a coxcomb at the age of six months, when he 
first saw himself in the mirror, from which time 
his nurse stopped his crying by tossing him in 
front of a looking-glass. His curls made him 
so attractive that at six years of age he was 
admitted to his mother's boudoir, from which 
his red-headed brother was excluded, and he 
superseded the spaniel in her ladyship's carriage. 
With the loss of his curls went the loss of favour. 
He did not prosper at school, and was rusticated 
after a year's residence at Oxford. Here he 
formed an acquaintance which helped him much 
in the world of coxcombry. Though this man 
was not well born, he was an admitted leader 
among gentlemen. Cecil soon discovered that 
his high social position was due entirely to his 
impertinence, and he made this wise observa- 
tion: "Impudence is the quality of a footman; 
impertinence of his master. Impudence is a 
thing to be rebutted with brute force; imperti- 
nence requires wit for the putting down." So 
he matched his wit with this man's imperti- 
nence, and they became sworn friends. 

When Cecil went to London, he found that 
"people had supped full of horrors, during the 
Revolution, and were now devoted to elegiac 
measures. My languid smile and hazel eyes 
were the very thing to settle the business of the 
devoted beings left for execution." Of course 



Mrs. Gore 219 

all the women fell desperately in love with him. 
"I had always a predisposition to woman- 
slaughter, with extenuating circumstances, as 
well as a stirring consciousness of the extermi- 
nating power," he explains to us. Like Childe 
Harold and Vivian Grey, this coxcomb soon 
became weary of London, and travelled through 
Europe in an indolent way, for after all it was 
his chief pleasure "to lie in an airy French 
bed, showered over with blue convolvulus," 
and read tender billets from the ladies. This 
book was an excellent antidote to the Byronic 
fever, then at its height. 

In her Sketches of English Character, Mrs. 
Gore describes different men who were in her 
time to be met with in the social life of London. 
The Dining-Out Man thus speaks for himself: 

"IH-natured people fancy that the life of a 
dining-out man is a life of corn, wine, and oil; 
that all he has to do is to eat, drink and be 
merry. I only know that, had I been aware in 
the onset of life, of all I should have to go 
through in my vocation, I would have chosen 
some easier calling. I would have studied law, 
physic, or divinity. " 

In the sketches of The Clubman, she as- 
signs John Bull's dislike of ladies' society as 
the reason for the many clubs in the English 
metropolis: 

"While admitting woman to be a divinity, 



220 Woman's Work in Fiction 

he chooses to conceal his idol in the Holy of 
Holies of domestic life. Duly to enjoy the 
society of Mrs. Bull, he chooses a smoking 
tureen, and cod's head and shoulders to inter- 
vene between them, and their olive branches 
to be around their table. . . . For John adores 
woman in the singular, and hates her in the 
plural; John loves, but does not like. Woman 
is the object of his passion, rarely of his regard. 
There is nothing in the gaiety of heart or spright- 
liness of intellect of the weaker sex which he 
considers an addition to society. To him 
women are an interruption to business and 
pleasure." 

Mrs. Gore could also unveil hypocrisy. In 
her novel Preferment, or My Uncle the Earl, she 
thus describes a worthy ornament of the church : 

"The Dean of Darbington glided along his 
golden railroad — 'mild as moonbeams' — soft as 
a swansdown muff — insinuating as a silken 
eared spaniel. His conciliating arguments 
were whispered in a tone suitable to the sick 
chamber of a nervous hypochondriac, and his 
strain of argument resembled its potations of 
thin, weak, well-sweetened barley water. While 
Dr. Macnab succeeded with his congregation 
by kicking and bullying them along the path 
of grace, Dr. Nicewig held out his finger with 
a coaxing air and gentle chirrup, like a bird- 
fancier decoying a canary. " 



Mrs. Gore 221 

A critic in the Westminster Review in 1831 
thus writes of her: 

"Mrs. Gore has a perfectly feminine know- 
ledge of all the weaknesses and absurdities 
of an ordinary man of fashion, following the 
routine of London life in the season. She 
unmasks his selfishness with admirable acute- 
ness; she exposes his unromantic egotism, with 
delightful sauciness. Her portraits of women 
are also executed with great spirit; but not 
with the same truth. In transferring men to 
her canvas, she has relied upon the faculty of 
observation, usually fine and vigilant in a 
woman; but when portraying her own sex, the 
authoress has perhaps looked within; and the 
study of the internal operations of the human 
machine is a far more complex affair, and re- 
quires far more extensive experience, and also 
different faculties, from those necessary to ac- 
quire a perfect knowledge of the appearances on 
the surface of humanity." 

Notwithstanding Mrs. Gore touches so lightly 
on the surface of life, certain definite socio- 
logical and moral principles underlie her work. 
She is as democratic as Charlotte Smith, Mrs. 
Inchbald, Miss Mitford, or even William Godwin. 
She asserts again and again that men of inferior 
birth with the same opportunities of education 
may be as intellectual and refined as the sons 
of a "hundred earls." Those members of the 



222 Woman's Work in Fiction 

aristocracy who fail to recognise the true worth 
of intelligent men of plebeian origin are made 
very ridiculous. In her novel Pin Money, pub- 
lished in 183 1, how very funny is Lady Derenzy's 
speech when she learns that a soap manu- 
facturer is being feted in fashionable society! 
Lady Derenzy, by the way, is the social law- 
giver to her little coterie: 

"It is now some years," said she, "since the 
independence of America, and the influence 
exerted in this country by the return of a large 
body of enlightened men, habituated to the 
demoralising spectacle of an equalisation of 
rank, was supposed to exert a pernicious in- 
fluence on the minds of the secondary and in- 
ferior classes of Great Britain. At that critical 
moment I whispered to my husband, 'Derenzy! 
be true to yourself, and the world will be true 
to you. Let the aristocracy of Great Britain 
unite in support of the Order; and it will main- 
tain its ground against the universe!' Lord 
Derenzy took my advice, and the country was 
saved. 

"Again, when the assemblage of the States 
General of France, — the fatal tocsin of the 
revolution, — spread consternation and horror 
throughout the higher ranks of every European 
country, and the very name of the guillotine 
operated like a spell on the British peerage, I 
whispered to my husband, 'Derenzy! be true 



Mrs. Gore 223 

to yourself, and the world will be true to you. 
Let the aristocracy of Great Britain unite in 
support of the Order; and it will maintain its 
ground against the universe!' Again Lord 
Derenzy took my advice, and again the country 
was saved." 

Mrs. Gore has so cleverly mingled the so-called 
self-made men and men of inherited rank in 
her books that one cannot distinguish between 
them. In The Soldier of Lyons, one of her early 
novels, which furnished Bulwer with the plot 
of his play The Lady of Lyons, the hero, a 
peasant by birth and a soldier of the Republic, 
enters into a marriage contract with the widow 
of a French marquis, in order to save her from 
the guillotine. This lady of high rank learns 
to respect her husband, and becomes the suitor 
for his love. In The Heir of Selwood, a former 
field marshal of Napoleon, a peasant, devotes 
his energies to improving the condition of the 
poor on the estate he had won by his services 
to his country, and at his death his tenants 
erected a column to his memory, bearing the 
inscription: "Most dear to God, to the king, and 
to the people." 

Mrs. Gore constantly asserts that the only 
distinctions between men are based upon char- 
acter and ability. She says of one of her char- 
acters, a poet: 

" His footing in society is no longer dependent 



224 Woman's Work in Fiction 

upon the caprice of a drawing-room. It is the 
security of that intellectual power which forces 
the world to bend the knee. The poor, dreamy 
boy, self-taught, self-aided, had risen into power. 
He wields a pen. And the pen in our age weighs 
heavier in the social scale than a sword of a 
Norman baron." 

Mrs. Gore lived at a time when the intro- 
duction of machinery and the establishment 
of large factories was producing a new type 
of man: men like Burtonshaw in The Hamiltons: 
"A practical, matter-of-fact individual, with 
plenty of money and plenty of intellect ; the sort 
of human power-loom one would back to work 
wonders against a dawdling old spinning-jenny 
like Lord Tottenham." 

A critic in the Westminster Review wrote in 
1832 as follows: 

"The wealthy merchant or money-dealer is 
represented, perhaps for the first time in fiction, 
as a man of true dignity, self-respect, education, 
and thorough integrity, agreeable in manners, 
refined in tastes, and content with, if not proud 
of, his position in society. ' ' 

Mrs. Gore was called by her contemporaries 
the novelist of the new era. 

She was also interested in the great ethical 
questions of life. She did not write of the 
love of youthful heroes and more youthful 
heroines. She often traced the consequences 



Mrs. Gore 225 

of sin on character and destiny. In The Heir 
of Selwood, she is as stern a moralist in tracing 
the effects of vice as George Eliot. The Banker's 
Wife, the scene of which is laid among the mer- 
chants of London, is a serious study of the sor- 
rows of a life devoted to outward show. The 
picture of the banker among his guests, whose 
wealth, unknown to them, he has squandered, 
reminds one of the days before the final over- 
throw of Dombey and Son. 

Mrs. Gore was a woman of genius. With the 
stern principles of the puritan, and feelings as 
republican as the mountain-born Swiss, she was 
never controversial. She saw the absurdities 
of certain hollow pretensions of society, but her 
good-humoured raillery offended no one. If her 
two hundred volumes could be weeded of 
their verbiage by some devotee of literature, 
and reduced to ten or fifteen, they would be not 
only entertaining reading, but would throw 
strong lights upon the elite of London in the days 
when hair-oils, pomades, and strong perfumes 
were the distinguishing marks of the Quality. 

Mrs. Gore owed her place in English letters 
to native wit and ability; Mrs. Bray owed hers 
to hard study and painstaking endeavour. She 
was one of the few women who followed the 
style of writing brought to perfection by Sir 
Walter Scott. 



226 Woman's Work in Fiction 

Mrs. Bray became imbued with the historic 
spirit early in life. Her first husband was 
Charles Stothard, the author of Monumental 
Effigies of Great Britain, with whom she trav- 
elled through Brittany, Normandy and Flanders. 
While he made careful drawings of the ruins 
of castles and abbeys, she read Froissart's 
Chronicles, visited the places which he has 
described, and traced out among the people any 
surviving customs which he has recorded. 

Two novels were the result of these studies. 
De Foix, or Sketches of the Manners and Customs 
of the Fourteenth Century, is a story of Gaston 
Phoebus, Count de Foix, whose court Froissart 
visited, and of whom he wrote: "To speak 
briefly and truly, the Count de Foix was perfect 
in person and in mind; and no contemporary 
prince could be compared with him for sense, 
honour, or liberality. ' ' The White Hoods, a name 
by which the citizens of Ghent were denomi- 
nated, is laid in the Netherlands, and tells of 
the conflict between the court and the citizens 
of Ghent, under Philip von Artaveld, during 
the reign of Charles the Fifth of France and the 
early kingship of Charles the Sixth. As in all 
her novels, the accuracy for which she strove 
in the most minute details retards the action 
of the plot, but adds to the historical value of 
these romances. 

For the tragic romance of The Talba, or Moor 



Mrs. Bray 227 

of Portugal, Mrs. Bray, as she had not visited 
the Spanish peninsula, depended upon her read- 
ing. The plot was suggested to her by a picture 
of Ines de Castro in the Royal Academy. It 
represented the gruesome coronation of the 
corpse of Ines de Castro, six years after her 
death. Thus did her husband, Don Pedro, 
show honour to his wife, who had been put to 
death while he, then a prince, was serving in the 
army of Portugal. The whole story is a fitting 
theme for tragedy, and was at one time drama- 
tised by Mary Mitford. In order to give her 
mind the proper elevation for the impassioned 
scenes of this novel, it was Mrs. Bray's custom 
to read a chapter of Isaiah or Job each day 
before beginning to write. 

After the death of her first husband, Mrs. 
Bray married the vicar of Tavistock, and for 
thirty-five years lived in the vicarage of that 
town. Here she became interested in the 
legends of Devon and Cornwall, and wrote five 
novels founded upon the history or tradition 
of those counties. Henry de Power oy opens 
at the abbey of Tavistock, one of the oldest 
abbeys in England, during the reign of Richard 
Cceur-de-Leon. The scene of Fitz of Fitz-Ford is 
also laid at Tavistock, but during the reign of 
Queen Elizabeth. Another story of the reign of 
the Virgin Queen was Warleigh, or the Fatal Oak: 
a Legend of Devon. Courtenay of Walreddon: a 



228 Woman's Work in Fiction 

Romance of the West takes place in the reign of 
Charles the First, about the commencement 
of the Civil War. A gypsy girl, by name Cin- 
derella Small, is introduced into the story, and 
has been highly praised. The character, as well 
as some of the stories told of her, was drawn 
from life. 

But the most famous of these novels is T re- 
lawny of Trelawne; or the Prophecy: a Legend 
of Cornwall, a story of the rebellion of Mon- 
mouth. Like most of the romances upon Eng- 
lish themes, the private history of the family 
furnishes the romance, the historical happenings 
being used only for the setting: the usual method 
of Scott. The hero of this novel is Sir Jonathan 
Trelawny, one of the seven bishops who were 
committed to the Tower by James the Second. 
When he was arrested by the king's command, 
the Cornish men rose one and all, and marched 
as far as Exeter, in their way to extort his 
liberation. Trelawny is a popular hero of Corn- 
wall, as the following lines testify : 

A good sword and a trusty hand I 
A merry heart and true! 
King James's men shall understand 
What Cornish lads can do! 

And have they fixed the where and when ? 
And shall Trelawny die? 
Here 's twenty thousand Cornish men 
Will know the reason why! 



Mrs, Bray 229 

Out spake their captain brave and bold, 
A merry wight was he — 
"If London Tower were Michael's hold, 
We '11 set Trelawny free!" 

We '11 cross the Tamar, land to land, 
The Severn is no stay, 
All side to side, and hand to hand, 
And who shall say us nay? 

And when we come to London Wall, 

A pleasant sight to view, 

Come forth! Come forth! Ye cowards all, 

To better men than you! 

Trelawny he 's in keep and hold — 
Trelawny he may die, 
But here 's twenty thousand Cornish bold 
Will know the reason why! 

Like Scott, Mrs. Bray went about with note- 
book in hand, and noted the features of the 
landscape, the details of a ruin, or the furniture 
or armour of the period of which she was writing. 
It is this painstaking work, together with the 
fact that she had access to places and books 
that were then denied to the ordinary reader, 
and chose subjects and places not before treated 
in fiction, that gives permanent value to her 
writings. She also had the proper feeling for 
the past, and dignity and elevation of style. 
Sometimes an entire page of her romances 



230 Woman's Work in Fiction 

might be attributed to the pen of the "Mighty 
Wizard." Perhaps the highest compliment 
that can be paid her as an artist is that she 
resembles Scott when he is nodding. 



CHAPTER XIV 

Julia Pardoe. Mrs. Trollope. 
Harriet Martineau 

SOMEWHERE between the second and third 
decades of the nineteenth century, the 
modern novel was born. The romances of 
the twenties are, for the most part, old-fashioned 
in tone, and speak of an earlier age; but in the 
thirties, the modern novel, with its exact repro- 
duction of places, customs, and speech, and 
strong local flavour, was full-grown. Dickens, 
under the name of Boz, was contributing his 
sketches to The Old Monthly Magazine and the 
Evening Chronicle. Thackeray was beginning 
to contribute articles to Fraser's Magazine, 
established in 1830. Annuals and monthlies 
sprang up in the night, and paid large sums 
for long and short stories. The thirst for them 
was unquenchable. Many women were sup- 
porting themselves by writing tales which did 
not live beyond the year of their publication. 
Mrs. Marsh was writing stories of fashionable 
231 



232 



Woman's Work in Fiction 



life varied by historical romances. Mrs. Crowe 
wrote stories of fashionable life varied by super- 
natural romances and tales of adventure. In 
The Story of Lilly Dawson, published in 1847, 
the heroine was captured and brought up by 
smugglers, and the gradual development of her 
character was traced ; thus giving to the story a 
psychological interest. Lady Blessington earned 
two thousand pounds a year for twenty years by 
novels and short stories of fashionable life. 
Lady Blessington had a European reputation 
as a court beauty and a brilliant and witty 
conversationalist. This with the coronet must 
have helped to sell her books. They do not 
contain even a sentence that holds the attention. 
A friend said of her, "Her genius lay in her 
tongue; her pen paralysed it." More enduring 
work in fiction was done by Julia Pardoe, Mrs. 
Trollope, and Harriet Martineau. 

The novels of Julia Pardoe, like those of Mrs. 
Bray, owe their value, not to their intrinsic 
merit, but to the comparatively unknown places 
to which she introduces her readers. She ac- 
companied her father, Major Pardoe, to Con- 
stantinople, where they were entertained by 
natives of high position, to whom they had 
letters of introduction, and Miss Pardoe was 
the guest of their wives in the harem. Her 
knowledge of the mode of life and habits of 



Julia Pardoe 233 

thought of Turkish women is considered second 
only to that of Mary Wortley Montagu. 

The material for her story The Romance of 
the Harem was obtained during her visits to 
these Turkish ladies. In this she has caught 
the languid, heavily perfumed atmosphere of 
the Orient. Besides the main plot, stories of 
adventure and love are related which beguiled 
the slowly passing hours of the inmates of the 
seraglio. Some of them might have been told 
by Schehezerhade, if she had wished to add to 
her entertainment of The Thousand and One 
Nights. 

After Miss Pardoe's return to England, she 
wrote a series of fashionable novels, inferior 
to many of those of Mrs. Gore, and better than 
the best of those by Lady Blessington. Con- 
fessions of a Pretty Woman, The Jealous Wife, 
and The Rival Beauties were the most popular 
of these, although they have long since been 
forgotten. 

In 1849, Miss Pardoe published a collection 
of stories under the title Flies in Amber. The 
title, she explains in the preface, was suggested 
by a belief of the Orientals that amber comes 
from the sea, and attiacts about it all insects, 
which find in it both a prison and a posthumous 
existence. Some of the stories of this col- 
lection were gathered in her travels. An 
Adventure in Bithynia, The Magyar and the 



234 



Woman's Work in Fiction 



Moslem, or an Hungarian Legend, and the Yere- 
Batan-Serai, which means Swallowed-up Palace, 
the great subterranean ruin of Constantinople, 
have the interest which always attaches to tales 
gathered by travellers in unfrequented places. 

Mrs. Frances Trollope, the mother of the more 
famous author Anthony Trollope, like Miss 
Pardoe, found material for stories in unfamiliar 
places. Mrs. Trollope had the nature of the 
pioneer. With her family, she sought our 
western lands of the Mississippi Valley, where 
the virgin forest had resounded to the axe of 
the first settler but a short time before. She 
wrote the first book of any note describing the 
manners of the Americans; the first strong 
novel calling attention to the evils of slavery 
in our Southern States; and the first one de- 
scribing graphically the white slavery in the 
cotton-mills of Lancashire; and she is, perhaps, 
the only writer who began a long literary career 
at the age of fifty-two. 

On the fourth of November, 1827, Mrs. Trol- 
lope with her three children sailed from London, 
and, after about seven weeks on the sea, arrived 
on Christmas Day at the mouth of the Missis- 
sippi. After a brief visit in New Orleans, this 
party of English travellers sailed up the river 
to Memphis, where, remote from the comforts 
of civilisation, they abode for a time under the 



Mrs. Trollope 235 

direction of Mrs. Wright, an English lecturer 
who had come to America for the avowed 
purpose of proving the perfect equality of the 
black and white races. But Mrs. Trollope and 
her family soon tired of life in the wilderness, 
and sought Cincinnati, at that time a small city 
of wooden houses, not over thirty years of age. 
After two years' residence in Cincinnati, she 
went by stage to Baltimore, visited Philadelphia 
and New York, and returned to England, after 
a sojourn of three and a half years in this 
country. 

During her residence in the United States, 
she made copious notes of what she saw and 
heard. These she published the year after her 
return to England, under the title Domestic 
Manners of the Americans. At once the pens 
of all the critics were let loose upon the author. 
Her American critics declared that she knew 
nothing about them or their country; and their 
English friends refused to believe that the people 
of America had such shocking bad manners. 

Mrs. Trollope reported truthfully what she saw 
and heard. But a frontier city is made up of 
people gathered from the four corners of the 
earth: each family is a law unto itself; so that 
the speeches Mrs. Trollope carefully set down, 
and the customs she depicted, were often pe- 
culiarities of individuals rather than of a com- 
munity. But she has left a vivid picture of 



236 Woman's Work in Fiction 

American life in the twenties, less exaggerated 
than the picture Charles Dickens gave of it in 
the forties. Mrs. Trollope's attitude is no more 
hostile than his, but he is more entertaining. 
He held us up to ridicule and laughed at us; 
she seriously pointed out our errors in the hope 
that we might amend. She is slightly incon- 
sistent at times, for, while asserting the equality 
of whites and blacks, she as bitterly resented 
the equality of white master and white servant. 
Her purpose in writing this book was to warn 
her own countrymen of the evils which must 
follow a government of the many. 

Although she never takes the broad view, 
but always the narrow and partial one, her book 
gives a good picture of the everyday life and 
habits of thought of the next generation to that 
which had fought and won the American Revolu- 
tion. The white heat of republican fervour, 
so obnoxious to a European, welded the nation 
together as one people, and filled their hearts 
with a religious reverence for the constitution. 
She meant them as a reproach, but we read 
these words with pride: "I never heard from 
anyone a single disparaging word against their 
government." 

Mrs. Trollope has been described by her 
friends as a refined woman of charming per- 
sonality. But as soon as she began to write, 
she donned her armour and proclaimed her hos- 



Mrs, Trollope 237 

tility either to her hero or to the larger part of 
the characters of the book. This method is 
dangerous to art. Even the genius of Thackeray- 
is lessened by his lack of sympathy. 

In 1833 Mrs. Trollope published her first 
novel, The Refugee in America. It is the story 
of an English lord who has fled to America to 
escape English justice. He and his friends 
have settled in Rochester, New York. It was 
written for the sole purpose of describing the 
manners of the people of our Eastern cities. 
The author's attitude toward them is well 
illustrated by a conversation between Caroline, 
the young English girl, and her American 
protegee, Emily. After a dinner in Washington, 
Caroline exclaims to her friend : 

" 'Oh, my own Emily, you must not live and 
die where such things be.' 

"Emily sighed as she answered, 'I am born 
to it, Miss Gordon. ' 

" 'But hardly bred to it. We have caught 
you young, and we have spoiled you for ever 
as an American lady. ' " 

Three years later Mrs. Trollope published her 
strongest novel, The Life and Adventures of Jona- 
than Jefferson Whitlow. This is a powerful pic- 
ture of early life on the Mississippi; it was the 
first novel since Mrs. Behn's Oroonoko which 
called attention to the evils of African slavery. 
It is marred, however, by want of sympathy 



238 Woman's Work in Fiction 

with the community she is describing. Mr. Jon- 
athan Whitlaw Senior has "squat in the bush," 
an expression to which Mrs. Trollope objects, 
but which brings to mind at once the log cabin 
in the forest clearing, and the muscular, un- 
couth pioneer. Jonathan furnishes firewood 
to the Mississippi steamers, and by this means 
gains sufficient wealth to carry out his life's 
ambition: to set up a store in Natchez, and 
to own "niggers." But the life of a pioneer 
has made Jonathan as cunning as a fox. This 
cunning his son Jonathan, the hero of the story, 
has inherited to the full. As a slave-owner he 
is as grasping and cruel as Legree, whom Mrs. 
Stowe immortalised some years later. His 
character, though drawn with strength and 
vigour, is inconsistent. He is a miser, yet he is 
a gambler and a spendthrift, qualities not often 
found together. He is not a true representa- 
tive of the son of a pioneer. Clio Whitlaw, the 
aunt of the hero, belongs more truly to her en- 
vironment. One suspects the English family at 
Cincinnati had received neighbourly kindnesses 
from women like her. With her physical 
strength and great courage she is kind and 
neighbourly to all who need her help. The sad 
story of Edward Bligh, the young Kentuckian 
who preached the gospel to the slaves, the vic- 
tim of lynch law, a word dreaded even then, is 
as thrilling as parts of Uncle Tom's Cabin. 



Mrs. Trollope 239 

Besides Jonathan Jefferson Whitlow, Mrs. 
Trollope created two other characters that will 
cause her name to live as long as those of 
William Harrison Ainsworth or G. P. R. James. 
The coarse scheming widow Barnaby is the 
heroine of three novels, Widow Barnaby, The 
Widow Married, and The Widow Wedded, or 
the Barnabys in America. In the last book Mrs. 
Trollope somewhat humorously pays off her 
scores against her American critics, who had 
dubbed her a cockney, unfamiliar with good soci- 
ety in either England or America. The Widow 
Barnaby, who has come to New Orleans with her 
husband after his little gambling ways have made 
residence in London unpleasant, decides to earn 
some money by writing a book on America. 
She describes the Americans, not as they are, 
but as they think they are. She listens to all 
their boasts about themselves and country, 
and puts it faithfully in her book. Of course 
they like it and she becomes the literary lion 
of America. 

Anthony Trollope, in his book An Autobiog- 
raphy , said of his mother's books on America: 
" Her volumes were very bitter; but they were 
very clever, and they saved the family from 
ruin." She is also given the credit of having 
improved the manners of American society. 
Whenever a " gentleman" at his club put his 
feet on the table, or indulged in any liberty of 



240 Woman's Work in Fiction 

which she would not have approved, others 
cried, "Trollope! Trollope! Trollope!" 

The Vicar of Wrexhill, the scene of which is 
laid in England, is an attack on the evangelical 
clergy in the Episcopal Church. The vicar 
is no truer to the great body of evangelical 
preachers than Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw is 
true to the great body of slave-owners. There 
is the same exaggeration to prove a theory. 
Evangelical preaching is harmful, is the theorem, 
and a man is selected to prove it who in any 
walk of life would be a hypocrite and libertine. 
The book has many interesting situations. 
The vicar's proposal to the rich widow, one of 
his parishioners, is clever: "Let me henceforth 
be as the shield and buckler that shall guard 
thee; so that thou shalt not be afraid for any 
terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth 
by day." And he promises, if she will marry 
him, to lead her "sinful children into the life 
everlasting. " No other book has shown, as 
this does, the powerful effect upon sensitive 
natures of this kind of preaching. One feels 
that the followers of the Reverend Vicar were 
under the influence of hypnotic suggestion, and 
that their awakening from this spell was like the 
awakening from a trance. 

Mrs. Trollope was actuated by humanitarian 
motives. This was not as usual then as since 
Dickens popularised the humanitarian novel. 



Mrs. Trollope 241 

Only three years after he wrote Sketches by 
Boz, Mrs. Trollope wrote The Life and Adven- 
tures of Michael Armstrong, the story of a boy 
employed in the mills of Lancashire. Negro 
slavery in the South, even as Mrs. Trollope saw 
it, was a happy state of existence compared 
with child slavery in the mills of Ashleigh and 
Deep Valley, Lancashire, where the children 
were driven to work by the lash in the morning, 
and wefe crippled by the "Billy roller," the 
name of the stick by which they were beaten 
for inattention to their work during the day. 
If the truth of these horrors were not attested 
by other writers of this time, one would doubt 
the possibility of their existence in the same 
land and at the same time in which Wordsworth 
was writing of the beauties of his own childhood, 
where the river Derwent mingled its murmurs 
with his nurse's song. 

Mrs. Trollope assailed injustice with a pow- 
erful pen. Woman's moral nature is truer 
and more sensitive than man's. Even if her 
sympathies cloud her judgment, it is better than 
that her judgment should reason away her 
sympathies. Neither has woman in her philan- 
thropy contented herself with broad principles 
which would help all and therefore reach none. 
The dusky slave in the cotton-fields, the pale- 
faced child in the cotton-mills, have alike 
touched the hearts of women, who by their pens 



242 Woman's Work in Fiction 

have been able to awaken the conscience of a 
nation. The horror of child labour wrung from 
Mrs. Browning the heart-felt poem, The Cry 
of the Children. The four strong novels pro- 
claiming the tyranny of the whites over the 
blacks, Oronooko, Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw, 
Uncle Tom's Cabin, and The Hour and the Man, 
were written by women. 

The name of Harriet Martineau was a familiar 
one in every household during the early years 
of Queen Victoria's reign. Like Mrs. Trollope 
she was a woman of fearless honesty. But 
Harriet Martineau was never the raconteur, she 
was first the educator. She wrote story after 
story to teach lessons in political and social 
science. Her method of work, as set forth 
in her autobiography, was peculiar, and the 
result is not uninteresting. In her Political 
Economy Tales, she selected certain principles 
which she wished to set forth, and embodied 
each principle in a character. The operations 
of these principles furnished the plot of the story. 
Besides the illustrations of the principles by the 
characters, the laws were discussed in conver- 
sation, and thus the lesson was taught. In the 
story Brooke and Brooke Farm, she made use of 
an expression which Ruskin almost paraphrased : 
"The whole nation, the whole world, is obliged 
to him who makes corn grow where it never grew 



Harriet Martineau 243 

before ; and yet more to him who makes two ears 
ripen where only one ripened before." In the 
tale A Manchester Strike, factory life and the 
problems that face the working men are set 
forth, the aim being to show that work and 
wages depend upon the great laws of supply 
and demand. 

Miss Martineau wrote two novels. Deerbrook, 
in 1839, was modelled on Our Village. The 
village doctor, Mr. Hope, is the central figure. 
Firm in his convictions, he loses the favour of 
the leading families, and through their influence 
he is deprived of his practice. A fever, how- 
ever, sweeps over the place and his former 
enemies beg, not in vain, for his skilful ser- 
vices. A double love story runs through the 
book. Mrs. Rowland, a scheming woman, is 
the most cleverly drawn of the characters, and 
was evidently suggested by some of Miss 
Edgeworth's fashionable ladies. 

Harriet Martineau also visited America, but 
some years later than Mrs. Trollope, when the 
slavery agitation was at its height. As she had 
written upon the evils of slavery before she left 
England, she was invited to attend a meeting 
of the Abolitionists in Boston. She accepted 
this invitation, and expressed there her ab- 
horrence of slavery. After this she received 
letters from some of the citizens of the pro-slav- 
ery States, threatening her life if she entered 



244 Woman's Work in Fiction 

their domain. This naturally threw her en- 
tirely with the Abolition party, and she wrote 
many articles to help their cause. 

Miss Martineau's second novel, The Hour and 
the Man, grew out of her sympathy and belief 
in the coloured race. Toussaint de L'Ouverture, 
the devoted slave, soldier, liberator, and martyr, 
is the hero. Every scene in which this won- 
derful black figures is vividly written. Many 
of the minor incidents are but slightly sketched, 
and many of the minor characters elude the 
reader's grasp. How far this book is a truthful 
portrayal of the negro cannot be judged unti 
the "race problem" is surveyed with unpreju- 
diced eyes. Then and not until then will its 
place in literature be assigned. She gives the 
same characterisation of this hero of St. Do- 
mingo as does Wendell Phillips in his wonderful 
speech of which the following is the peroration : 

" But fifty years hence, when Truth gets a 
hearing, the Muse of History will put Phocian 
for the Greek, Brutus for the Roman, Hampden 
for England, Fayette for France, choose Wash- 
ington as the bright, consummate flower of our 
earlier civilisation, then, dipping her pen in 
the sunlight, will write in the clear blue, above 
them all, the name of the soldier, the states- 
man, the martyr, Toussaint L'Ouverture." 

The Hour and the Man was published in 
1840, and was warmly received by the Aboli- 



Harriet Martineau 245 

tionists. William Lloyd Garrison, after read- 
ing it, wrote the following sonnet to the author : 

England! I grant that thou, dost justly boast 

Of splendid geniuses beyond compare; 

Men great and gallant, — women good and fair, — 

Skilled in all arts, and filling every post 

Of learning, science, fame, — a mighty host ! 

Poets divine, and benefactors rare, — 

Statesmen, — philosophers, — and they who dare 

Boldly to explore heaven's vast and boundless coast, 

To one alone I dedicate this rhyme, 

Whose virtues with a starry lustre glow, 

Whose heart is large, whose spirit is sublime, 

The friend of liberty, of wrong the Foe: 

Long be inscribed upon the roll of time 

The name, the worth, the works of HarrietMartineau. 

Miss Martineau wrote on a variety of sub- 
jects, and generally held a view contrary to the 
accepted one. She wrote upon mesmerism, 
positivism, atheism, which she professed, and 
after each book warriors armed with pens 
sprang up to assail the author. But she had 
many friends, even among those who were most 
bitter against her doctrines. One wrote of her, 
"There is the fine, honest, solid, North-country 
element in her." R. Brimley Johnson in Eng- 
lish Prose, edited by Craik in 1896, said of her 
writings : 

" Her gift to literature was for her own genera- 
tion. She is the exponent of the infant century 
in many branches of thought: — its eager and 



246 Woman's Work in Fiction 

sanguine philanthropy, its awakening interest 
in history and science, its rigid and prosaic 
philosophy. But her genuine humanity and real 
moral earnestness give a value to her more per- 
sonal utterances, which do not lose their charm 
with the lapse of time." 

Harriet Martineau's name and personality 
will be remembered in history after her books 
have been forgotten. 



CHAPTER XV 

The Brontes 

DURING the middle of the nineteenth 
century, English fiction largely depicted 
manners and customs of different classes and 
different parts of England. While Dickens, 
Thackeray, Disraeli, and Mrs. Gaskell were writ- 
ing realistic novels, romantic fiction found noble 
exponents in the Bronte sisters. 

The quiet life lived by the Brontes in the 
vicarage on the edge of the village of Haworth 
in the West Riding of Yorkshire seems prosaic 
to the casual observer, but it had many weird 
elements of romanticism. The purple moors 
stretching away behind the grey stone vicarage, 
the grey sky, and the sun always half- frowning, 
and never sporting with nature here as it does 
over the mountains in Westmoreland, make 
thought earnest and deep, and suggest the 
mystery which surrounds human life. It is a 
serious country, that of the Wharf valley; the 
people are a serious people, silent and observant. 
The Brontes were a direct outcome of this 
247 



248 Woman's Work in Fiction 

country and people, only in them their sever- 
ity and silence were kindled into life by a Celtic 
imagination. 

What a group of people lived within those 
grey stone walls! As the vicar and his four 
motherless children gathered about their simple 
board, while they engaged in conversation 
with each other or with the curate, what scenes 
would have been enacted in that quiet room 
if the fancies teeming in each childish brain 
could have been suddenly endowed with life! 
How could even a dull curate, with an under- 
current of addition and subtraction running in 
his brain, based upon his meagre salary and 
economical expenditures, have been insensible 
to the thought with which the very atmosphere 
must have been surcharged? The brother, 
Patrick Branwell, found his audience in the pub- 
lic house, and delighted it with his wit and con- 
versation. The sisters, after their household 
tasks were done, wrote their stories and often 
read them to each other. 

But fate had chosen her darkest hues in which 
to weave the warp and woof of their lives. The 
wild dissipations and wilder talk of their brother 
Branwell clouded the imaginations of his sisters, 
and in a short time death was a constant presence 
in their midst. In September, 1848, Branwell 
died at the age of thirty; in less than three 
months, Emily died at the age of twenty-nine; 



Emily Bronte 249 

and in five months, Anne died at the age of 
twenty-seven; and Charlotte, the eldest, was 
left alone with her father. During the remain- 
ing six years of her life, her compensation for her 
loss of companionship was her writing. Not 
long after the death of her sisters, Mr. Nicholls 
proposed to her; was refused; proposed again 
and was accepted; then came the separation 
caused by Mr. Bronte's hostility to the marriage; 
then the marriage in the church under whose 
pavement so many members of her family were 
buried, grim attendants of her wedding; then 
the nine short months of married life; then the 
death of the last of the Bronte sisters at the 
age of thirty-nine. Mr. Bronte outlived her only 
six years, but he was the last of his family. 
Six children had been born to Patrick Bronte, 
not one survived him. Forty years had elimi- 
nated a family which yet lives' through the im- 
aginative powers of the three daughters who 
reached years of maturity. 

Of the three sisters, the least is known of 
Emily, and her one novel, Wuthering Heights, 
reveals nothing of herself. Not one of the 
characters thought or felt as did the quiet, 
retiring author. Yet so great was her dramatic 
power that her brother Branwell was credited 
with the book, as it was deemed impossible for 
a woman to have conceived the character of 
Heathcliff. And yet this arch-fiend of litera- 



250 Woman's Work in Fiction 

ture was created by the daughter of a country 
vicar, whose only journeys from home had been 
to schools, either as pupil or governess. Char- 
lotte Bronte has thrown but little light upon 
her sister's character. She says that she loved 
animals and the moors, but was cold toward 
people and repelled any attempt to win her 
confidence. The author of Jane Eyre seems 
neither to have understood Emily's nature nor 
her genius. Yet we are told that Emily was 
constantly seen with her arms around the gentle 
Anne, and that they were inseparable com- 
panions. If Anne Bronte could have lived 
longer, she would have thrown much light upon 
the character of the author of Wuthering 
Heights. But now, as we read of her brief life 
and her one novel, she seems to belong to the 
great dramatists rather than to the novelists, 
to the poets who live apart from the world and 
commune only with the people of their own 
creating. 

Wuthering Heights stands alone in the history 
of prose fiction. It belongs to the wild region 
of romanticism, but it imitates no book, and 
has never been copied. No incident, no char- 
acter, no description, can be traced to the 
influence of any other book, but the atmosphere 
is that of the West Riding of Yorkshire. 

Charlotte Bronte thus speaks of it in a letter 
to a friend: 



Emily Bronte 251 

" Wuthering Heights was hewn in a wild work- 
shop, with simple tools, out of homely ma- 
terials. The statuary found a granite block 
on a solitary moor ; gazing thereon, he saw how 
from the crag might be elicited a head, savage, 
swart, sinister: a form moulded with at least 
one element of grandeur — power. He wrought 
with a rude chisel, and from no model but the 
vision of his meditations. With time and labour, 
the crag took human shape, and there it stands, 
colossal, dark and frowning, half statue, half 
rock, in the former sense, terrible and goblin- 
like; in the latter, almost beautiful, for its 
colouring is of mellow grey, and moorland moss 
clothes it, and heath, with its blooming bells 
and balmy fragrance, grows faithfully close 
to the giant's foot." 

All of this is true, but it gives only the gen- 
eral outlines, nothing of the inner meaning. 

In all literature, there is not so repulsive a 
villain as HeathclifT, the offspring of the gipsies. 
Insensible to kindness, but resentful of wrong; 
hard, scheming, indomitable in resolution; quick 
to put off the avenging of an injury until he 
can make his revenge serve his purpose; the 
personification of strength and power; he is 
yet capable of a love stronger than his hate. 
HeathclifT is so repulsive that he does not 
attract, and drawn with such skill that, as has 
been said, he has not been imitated. 



252 Woman's Work in Fiction 

But the strong, dark picture of Heathcliff 
makes us forget that Catharine is the centre 
of the story. The night that Mr. Lockwood 
spends at Wuthering Heights he reads her 
books, and her spirit appears to him crying for 
entrance at the window, and complaining that 
she has wandered on the moors for twenty 
years. While living, she represents a human 
soul balanced between heaven and hell, loved 
by both the powers of darkness and of light. 
But in her earliest years, she had loved Heath- 
cliff; their thoughts, their affections were inter- 
twined, and they were welded, as it were, into 
one soul, not at first by love, but by their 
common hatred of Hindley Earnshaw. When 
Catharine meets Edgar Linton, her finer nature 
asserts itself. She loves him as a being from 
another world; he gives her the first glimpse 
of real goodness, kindness, and gentleness. She 
catches through him a gleam of Paradise. But 
she knows how transient this is, and says to 
her old nurse, Nelly Dean: 

"I've no more business to marry Edgar 
Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the 
wicked man in there had not brought Heath- 
cliff so low, I should n't have thought of it. It 
would degrade me to marry Lleathcliff now; 
and that, not because he's handsome, no, 
Nelly, but because he 's more myself than I am. 
Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine 



Emily Bronte 253 

are the same, and Linton's is as different as a 
moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire." 

But Catharine is married to Edgar, and for 
three years her better nature triumphs. Heath- 
cliff is away; Edgar Linton loves her truly, and 
their home is happy. Catharine alone knows 
that that house is not her true place of abode. 
She alone knows that Edgar has not touched 
her inner nature. She knows that her real self, 
the self that must abide through the centuries, 
is indissolubly linked with another's. And when 
Heathcliff returns, the intensity of her joy, 
her almost unearthly delight, she neither can 
nor attempts to conceal. Not once is she de- 
ceived as to his true nature. She knows the 
depth of his depravity, and thus warns the girl 
who has fallen in love with him: 

"He 's not a rough diamond — a pearl -con- 
taining oyster of a rustic ; — he 's a fierce, pitiless, 
wolfish man. I never say to him, let this or 
that enemy alone, because it would be un- 
generous or cruel to harm them, — I say, let 
them alone, because I should hate them to be 
wronged: and he 'd crush you, like a sparrow's 
egg, Isabella, if he found you a troublesome 
charge." 

But Catharine's nature is akin to his, and it 
is with almost brutal delight that she helps 
forward this marriage, when she finds the girl 
does not trust her word. 



254 Woman's Work in Fiction 

Then comes the strife between Edgar and 
Heathclifl for the soul, so it seems, of Catharine. 
There is no jealousy on Edgar's part. The book 
never stoops to anything so earthly. Edgar 
loathes Heathclifl and cannot understand Cath- 
arine's affection for her early playmate. Al- 
though she never for a moment hesitates in her 
allegiance to Heathclifl, it is this strife that 
causes her death. The strife between good and 
evil wears her out. 

Even after her death, her soul cannot leave 
this earth. It is still joined to Heathcliff's. 
It resembles here the story of Paola and Fran- 
cesca. Catharine is waiting for him and his 
only delight is in her haunting presence. Heath- 
cliff cannot be accused of keeping Catharine 
from Paradise. In life she would not let him 
from her presence, and she clings to him now. 
It is the story of Undine reversed. Undine 
gained a soul through a mortal's love. And 
we feel toward the close that Catharine, selfish 
and passionate as she was, is yet Heathcliff's 
better spirit. Catharine while living had pre- 
vented Heathclifl from killing her brother. 
Although he loved Catharine better than him- 
self, and would have made any sacrifice at her 
request, he feels no more tenderness for her 
offspring than for his own. But the spirit of 
Catharine lived in her child and nephew, and 
when they looked at him with her eyes, he had 



Emily Bronte 255 

no pleasure in his revenge upon the son of 
Hindley nor on the daughter of Edgar Linton. 

In the tenderness that once or twice comes 
over Heathcliff as he looks at Hareton Earn- 
shaw, there is a ray of promise that he may be 
redeemed. And in the final outcome of the 
story, one can but hope that Catharine's restless 
spirit, as it watches and waits for Heathcliff, is 
striving to bring some blessing upon her house. 
The awakening of a better nature in Hareton, 
through his love for Catharine's daughter, is a 
pretty, tender idyl. The book is like a Greek 
tragedy in this, that at the close the atmosphere 
has been purged; the sun once more shines 
through the windows of Wuthering Heights; 
hatred is dead, and love reigns supreme. 

Wuthering Heights is a novel not of externals, 
not of character, but of something deeper, more 
vital. The love of Catharine and Heathcliff 
has no physical basis; it is the union of souls 
evil, but not material. It is the sex of spirit, 
not of body, that adds its might to the resistless 
force that unites these two. Notwithstanding 
the external pictures are so distinct that a 
painter could transfer them to his canvas, the 
book is a soul-tragedy. 

Wuthering Heights cannot be classed among 
the so-called popular novels. It has appealed 
to the poets rather than to the readers of fiction. 
It has received the warmest praise from the 



256 Woman's Work in Fiction 

poet Swinburne. In The AihencBum of June 
16, 1883, he thus eulogises it: 

"Now in Wuthering Heights this one thing 
needful ['logical and moral certitude'] is as 
perfectly and triumphantly attained as in King 
Lear or The Duchess of Malfi, in The Bride of 
Lammermoor or Notre-Dame de Paris. From 
the first we breathe the fresh dark air of tragic 
passion and presage; and to the last the changing 
wind and flying sunlight are in keeping with 
the stormy promise of the dawn. There is no 
monotony, there is no repetition, but there is no 
discord. This is the first and last necessity, 
the foundation of all labour and the crown of all 
success, for a poem worthy of the name; and 
this it is that distinguishes the hand of Emily 
from the hand of Charlotte Bronte. All the 
works of the elder sister are rich in poetic spirit, 
poetic feeling, and poetic detail ; but the younger 
sister's work is essentially and definitely a poem 
in the fullest and most positive sense of the 
term." 

At the close of this essay he writes : 

11 It may be true that not many will ever take 
it to their hearts; it is certain that those who do 
like it will like nothing very much better in the 
whole world of poetry or prose. " 

All that we know of Emily Bronte's nature 
is consistent, such as we would expect of the 
author of Wuthering Heights. The first stanza 



Anne Bronte 257 

of her last poem, written but a short time be- 
fore her death, reveals her strength of will and 
faith: 

No coward soul is mine, 

No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere: 
I see Heaven's glories shine, 

And faith shines equal, arming me from fear. 

These lines evoked the following tribute from 
Matthew Arnold: 

she 

(How shall I sing her ?) whose soul 

Knew no fellow for might, 

Passion, vehemence, grief, 

Daring, since Byron died, 

That world-famed son of fire — she, who sank 

Baffled, unknown, self -consumed ; 

Whose too bold dying song 

Stirr'd, like a clarion-blast, my soul. 

The great books of prose fiction have been 
for the most part the work of mature years. 
The lyric poets burst into rhapsody at the dawn 
of life; but the powers of the novelist have 
ripened more slowly. The novelists have done 
better work after thirty-five than at an earlier 
age but few of them have written a classic at the 
age of twenty-eight, as did Emily Bronte. 

Anne Bronte's fame has been both augmented 
and dimmed by the greater genius of her two 
sisters. She is remembered principally as one 



258 Woman's Work in Fiction 

of the Brontes, so that her books have been 
oftener reprinted and more extensively read 
than their actual merit would warrant. In 
comparison with the greater genius of Charlotte 
and Emily, her writings have been declared 
void of interest, and without any ray of the 
brilliancy which distinguishes their books. This 
latter statement is not true. Anne Bronte did 
not have their imaginative power, but she 
reproduced what she had seen and learned of 
life with conscientious devotion to truth. Wuth- 
ering Heights and Agnes Grey, Anne Bronte's 
first book, were published together in three 
volumes so as to meet the popular demand 
that novels, like the graces, should appear in 
threes. It is a photographic representation of 
the life of a governess in England during the 
forties. Agnes 's courage in determining to 
augment the family income by seeking a po- 
sition as governess; the high hopes with which 
she enters upon her first position; her con- 
scientious resolve to do her full Christian duty 
to the spoiled children of the Bloomfields; her 
dismissal and sad return home; her second 
position in the family of Mr. Murray, a country 
squire; the two daughters, one determined to 
make a fine match for herself, the other a 
perfect hoyden without a thought beyond the 
horses and dogs; the disregard of the truth in 
both; Mr. Hatfield, the minister, who cared 



Anne Bronte 259 

only for the county families among his parish- 
ioners; Miss Murray's marriage for position and 
the unhappiness that followed it — form a series 
of photographs, which only a sensitive, respon- 
sive nature could have produced. The contrast 
between the gentle, refined governess, and the 
coarse natures upon whom she is dependent, is 
well shown, although there is no attempt on the 
part of the author to assert any superiority of 
one over the other. We have many books in 
which the shrinking governess is described from 
the point of view of the family or one of their 
guests, but here the governess of an English 
fox-hunting squire has spoken for herself; she 
has described her trials and the constant self- 
sacrifice which is demanded of her without 
bitterness, and in a kindly spirit withal, and for 
that reason the book is a valuable addition to the 
history of the life and manners of the century. 
The Tenant of Wiklfell Hall, her second novel, 
was a peculiar book to have shaped itself in the 
brain of the gentle youngest daughter of the 
Vicar of Haworth. But Anne Bronte had seen 
phases of life which must have sorely wounded 
her pure spirit. She had been governess at Thorp 
Green, where her brother Branwell was tutor, 
and where he formed that unfortunate attach- 
ment for the wife of his employer, which, with the 
help of liquor and opium, deranged his mind. 
Anne wrote in her diary at this time, " I have 



260 Woman's Work in Fiction 

had some very unpleasant and undreamt-of 
experience of human nature." As we picture 
Anne Bronte, with her light brown hair, violet - 
blue eyes, shaded by pencilled eyebrows, and 
transparent complexion, she seems a spirit of 
goodness and purity made to behold daily a 
depth of evil in the nature of one dear to her, 
which fills her with wonderment and horror. 

Mr. Huntingdon of Wildfell Hall was drawn 
from personal observation of her brother. She 
wrote with minuteness, because she believed 
it her duty to hold up his life as a warning to 
others. The gradual change in Mr. Huntingdon 
from the happy confident lover to the ruined 
debauchee is well traced; the story of his in- 
fatuation for the wife of his friend, so reckless 
that he attempted no concealment, is realistic 
in the extreme. But what a change in the novel ! 
A hundred years before, Huntingdon would 
have made a fine hero of romance, but here he 
is disgraced to the position of chief villain, 
and the reader feels for him only pity and 
loathing. Probably a man's pen would have 
touched his errors more lightly, but Anne 
Bronte painted him as he appeared to her. The 
author attributes such a character as Hunting- 
don's to false education, and makes her heroine 
say: 

" As for my son — if I thought he would grow 
up to be what you call a man of the world,— one 



Charlotte Bronte 261 

that has ' seen life,' and glories in his experience, 
even though he should so far profit by it as to 
sober down, at length, into a useful and re- 
spected member of society — I would rather 
that he died to-morrow — rather a thousand 
times." 

Notwithstanding its defects — and it is full 
of them judged from the stand-point of art — 
Wildfell Hall is a book of promise. In the 
descriptions of the Hall, the mystery that sur- 
rounds its mistress, the rumours of her unknown 
lover, the heathclad hills and the desolate fields, 
there are romantic elements that remind one of 
Wuthering Heights. The book is more faulty 
than Agnes Grey, but the writer had a deeper 
vision of life with its weaknesses and its depths of 
human passion. If years had mellowed that 
"undreamt-of experience" of Thorp Green, 
Anne Bronte with her truthful observation and 
sympathetic insight into character might have 
written a classic. The material out of which 
Wildfell Hall was wrought , under a more mature 
mind, with a better grasp of the whole and a 
better regard for proportion, would have made 
a novel worthy of a place beside Jane Eyre. 

That English fiction has produced sweeter 
and more varied fruit by being grafted with the 
novels of women no one who gives the matter 
a serious thought can for a moment doubt. 



262 Woman's Work in Fiction 

One distinctive phase of woman's mind made 
its way but slowly in the English novel. Women 
are by nature introspective. They read char- 
acter and are quick to grasp the motives and 
passions that underlie action. The French 
women have again and again embodied this 
view of human nature in their novels, which 
are essentially of the inner life. The Princess 
of Cleves by Madame de Lafayette, written in 
1678, is the first book in which all the conflicts 
are those of the emotions ; here the great triumph 
is that which a woman wins over her own heart. 
Madame de Tencin in Memoires du Comte de 
Comminges represents her hero and heroine 
under the influence of two great passions, re- 
ligion and love. Madame de Souza, Madame 
Cottin, Madame de Genlis, Madame de Stael, and 
George Sand wrote novels of the inner life. 
The Princess of Cleves with noble dignity con- 
trols her emotion and at last conquers it. The 
pages of George Sand thrill with unbridled 
passion. 

The English women, however, are more re- 
pressed by nature than the French, and the 
English novel of the inner life advanced but 
slowly. The emotions of the long-forgotten 
Sidney Biddulph are minutely told. A Simple 
Story by Mrs. Inchbald is a psychological novel. 
Amelia Opie, Mary Brunton, and Mrs. Shelley 
wrote novels of the inner life. 



Charlotte Bronte 263 

But Jane Eyre is the first English novel which 
in sustained intensity of emotion can compare 
with the novels of Madame de Stael or George 
Sand. The style partakes of the high-wrought 
character of the heroine, and the reader is 
whirled along in the vortex of feeling until he 
too partakes of every varied mood of the char- 
acters, and closes the book fevered and ex- 
hausted. It is one of the ironies of fate that 
Charlotte Bronte with her strong pro- Anglican 
prejudices should belong to the school of these 
French women. But there is the same difference 
between their writings that there is between 
the French temperament and the English. Even 
in the wildest moments of Jane Eyre her passion 
is rather like the river Wharf when it has over- 
flowed its banks ; while theirs is like the mountain 
torrent that bears all down before it. 

Much of the passion that Charlotte Bronte 
describes is pure imagination. She wrote freely 
to her friends about herself and the people whom 
she knew. The three rejected suitors caused 
her only a little amusement. Her love for Mr. 
Nicholls, whom she afterwards married, was 
little warmer than respect. We could as easily 
weave a romance out of Jane Austen's remark 
that the poet Crabbe was a man whom she could 
marry as to make a love story out of Charlotte's 
relations to Monseiur Heger, who figures as the 
hero in three of her books. Here she is greater 



264 Woman's Work in Fiction 

than the French women writers: they knew by 
experience what they wrote; she by innate 
genius. 

Perhaps no novelist ever had more meagre 
materials out of which to make four novels than 
had Charlotte Bronte : her sisters, Monsieur and 
Madame Heger, the curates, and herself; a small 
village in Yorkshire, two boarding schools, two 
positions as governess, and a short time spent 
in a school in Brussels. Compare this range 
with the material that Scott, Dickens, or 
Thackeray had — then judge how much of the 
elixir of genius was given to each. 

The early pages of Jane Eyre, the first novel 
which Charlotte Bronte published, describe 
Lowood Institution, a place modelled upon 
Cowan's Bridge School. The two teachers, the 
kind Miss Temple and the cruel Miss Scatcherd, 
were drawn from two instructors there at the 
time the Brontes attended it. Helen Burns, 
so untidy but so meek in spirit, was Maria 
Bronte, the eldest sister, who died at the age 
of eleven, probably as a result of the poor food 
and harsh treatment of the school. With what 
calm she replies to Jane, when she would sym- 
pathise with her for an unjust punishment: 

"I am, as Miss Scatcherd said, slatternly; I 
seldom put, and never keep, things in order; 
I am careless; I forget rules; I read when I 
should learn my lessons; I have no method; and 



Charlotte Bronte 265 

sometimes I say, like you, I cannot bear to be 
subjected to systematic arrangements. This 
is all very provoking to Miss Scatcherd, who is 
naturally neat, punctual, and particular." 

Helen Burns, with her calm submission, and 
Jane Eyre, with her rebellious spirit, are finely 
contrasted. Jane's passionate resentment of the 
punishments which Miss Scatcherd inflicted on 
Helen was genuine. Charlotte was nine years 
old when she left Cowan's Bridge School, but 
her suppressed anger at the punishments which 
her sister Maria had received there flashed out 
years afterwards in Jane Eyre. 

Charlotte Bronte was writing Jane Eyre at 
the same time that Emily and Anne were writing 
Wutkering Heights and Agnes Grey. As they 
read from their manuscripts, Charlotte objected 
to beauty as a requisite of a heroine, and said, 
" I will show you a heroine as plain and as small 
as myself, who shall be as interesting as any 
of yours." So arose the conception of Jane 
Eyre. If the slight, shy, Yorkshire governess, 
without beauty or charm of manner, had ap- 
peared before the imagination of any novelist 
either male or female, at that time, and asked 
to be admitted into the house of fiction, she 
would have been refused entrance as cruelly as 
Hannah shut the door in the face of Jane Eyre, 
when she came to her dripping with the rain, 
cold and weak from two nights' exposure on the 



266 Woman's Work in Fiction 

moor, and asking for charity. But Charlotte 
Bronte, with a woman's sympathetic eye made 
doubly penetrating and loving by genius, chose 
this outcast from romance as a heroine, a woman 
without beauty or charm, and boldly proclaimed 
that moral beauty was superior to physical 
beauty, and that the attraction of one soul for 
another lay quite beyond the pale of external 
form. 

Jane Eyre is not, however, Charlotte Bronte, 
as has been so often asserted. She would not 
have gone back to comfort Mr. Rochester, after 
she had once left the Hall. One suspects that 
he was drawn from reading, since the author 
hardly trusted her knowledge of worldly men 
to draw a fitting lover for Jane. Mr. Rochester 
is very much the same type of man as Mr. B., 
whom Pamela married, and the independent 
Jane addresses him as "My Master," an ex- 
pression constantly on the lips of Pamela. Yet 
Rochester leaves a permanent impression on the 
mind, for he represents a strong man at war 
with destiny. He conceals his marriage because 
of his determination to conquer fate. It is 
pointed out by critics to-day that he is quite an 
impossible character, that he is, in fact, a 
woman's hero. It is well to remember, how- 
ever, that the author of Jane Eyre was believed 
at first to have been a man, as it was thought 
impossible for a man like Rochester to have 



Charlotte Bronte 267 

been conceived in a woman's brain, and not 
until Mrs. Gaskell's life of the Brontes was 
published was Charlotte's character as a modest 
woman established. But men have repudiated 
Mr. Rochester, and so we must accept their 
judgment. 

The heroine of her next novel, Shirley, was 
suggested by Emily Bronte. Only Shirley was 
not Emily. Shirley could not have conceived 
even the dim outlines of Wuthering Heights, but 
she had many of the strong qualities of Emily, 
and these, mingled with the softer stuff of her 
own nature, make her contradictory but charm- 
ing, and Louis Moore, an agreeable tutor whom 
Emily Bronte would have quite despised, 
naturally falls in love with his wayward pupil, 
as they pore over books in the school-room. 
Shirley is contrasted with Caroline Helstone, 
of whom Mrs. Humphry Ward says: "For 
delicacy, poetry, divination, charm, Caroline 
stands supreme among the women of Miss 
Bronte's gallery." Even if other admirers of 
Miss Bronte deny her this eminence, she cer- 
tainly possesses all the qualities, rare among 
heroines, which Mrs. Ward has attributed to her. 

In many of the conversations between Shirley 
and Caroline, there are reminders of what passed 
between the Bronte sisters in their own home. 
The relative excellence of men and women 
novelists always interested them. Shirley 



268 Woman's Work in Fiction 

evidently expressed Charlotte's own views in 
the following words: 

"If men could see us as we really are, they 
would be a little amazed; but the cleverest, 
the acutest men are often under an illusion 
about women. They do not read them in a true 
light; they misapprehend them, both for good 
and evil : their good woman is a queer thing, half 
doll, half angel; their bad woman almost always 
a fiend. Then to hear them fall into ecstasies 
with each other's creations, worshipping the 
heroine of such a poem — novel — drama, think- 
ing it fine, — divine! Fine and divine it may be, 
but often quite artificial — false as the rose in my 
best bonnet there. If I spoke all I think on 
this point, if I gave my real opinion of some 
first-rate female characters in first-rate works, 
where should I be? Dead under a cairn of 
avenging stones in half-an-hour. " 

"After all," says Caroline, "authors' heroines 
are almost as good as authoresses' heroes." 

"Not at all," Shirley replies. "Women read 
men more truly than men read women. I '11 
prove that in a magazine article some day when 
I ' ve time ; only it will never be inserted ; it will 
be 'declined with thanks,' and left for me at 
the publisher's." 

The greater part of the men in Shirley were 
drawn from life, and are as true to their sex as 
were the heroines of Dickens, Thackeray, or 



Charlotte Bronte 269 

Disraeli, who were then writing. As for the 
curates, they are perfect. No man's hand 
could have executed their portraits so skilfully. 
They have no more real use in the story than 
they seem to have had in their respective par- 
ishes. But this daughter of a country vicar, 
who knew nothing of the London cockney, who 
was then enlivening the books of Dickens, 
seized upon the funniest people she knew, the 
curates, and they have been immortalised. 

There is often in Charlotte Bronte's novels a 
separation of plot and character, as if they 
formed themselves independently in her mind. 
This is especially true of Shirley. At that time 
the attention of England was directed toward 
the manufacturing towns of Lancashire and 
Yorkshire. Mrs. Trollope and Harriet Mar- 
tineau had written upon conditions of life 
there. In Sybil Disraeli considered broadly 
the underlying causes of the misery of the 
operatives. Mrs. Gaskell wrote Mary Barton, 
a story of Manchester life, the same year that 
Charlotte Bronte was writing Shirley. The plot 
of the last named is laid in the early years of 
the nineteenth century, and turns upon the 
opposition of the workmen to the introduction 
of machinery. But the plot and characters are 
constantly getting in each other's way and 
tripping each other up. Though the book is full 
of defects, one cannot judge it harshly. When 



270 Woman's Work in Fiction 

she began the funny description of the curates' 
tea-drinking, her brother and sisters were with 
her. Before it was finished, she and her father 
were left alone. But at this time the public 
demanded melodrama. Fires, drownings, and 
death-beds were popular methods of untying 
hard knots and of playing upon the emotions of 
the reader. She, like Mrs. Gaskell, constantly 
resorts to outside circumstances to help put 
things to rights when they are drifting in the 
wrong direction, circumstances which Jane 
Austen would not have admitted in a book of 
hers. 

Before Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre or 
Shirley, she had finished The Professor, and 
offered it to different publishers, but it was 
rejected by all. Finally she herself lost faith 
in it, and transformed it into the beautiful story 
of Villette, where the school of Madame and 
Monseiur H6ger in Brussels is made immortal. 
In the plot of Villette, as in the plot of Jane 
Eyre and of Shirley, many extraneous events 
happen which are either unexpected or un- 
necessary. Like Jane Eyre, Villette is steeped 
in the romantic spirit, but the hard light of 
reason again dispels the illusion. In the man- 
agement of the supernatural Charlotte is far 
inferior to Emily. The explanation of the nun 
in Villette is even childish. It is the mistake 
made by Mrs. Radcliffe, by nearly all writers 



Charlotte Bronte 



271 



of the age of reason. They give a ray, as it 
were, a whisper from the mysterious world 
which surrounds that which is manifest to our 
everyday senses. Be it the fourth dimension, 
or what not, we catch for a moment a message 
from this other world, which, even indistinct, 
still tells us that this visible world is not all, that 
there is something beyond. Then, with hard 
common-sense, they deny their own message, 
and, so doing, deny to us the world of mystery, 
and leave us only the material world in which 
to believe. Not so Emily Bronte. Not so 
Scott or Shakespeare. We may believe in 
Hamlet's ghost or not; we may believe or not 
in the White Lady of Avenel; we may believe 
or not that Catharine's soul hovered near Heath- 
cliff. But we are still left with a belief in the 
life after death, and still believe in something 
beyond experience, and still grope to find those 
things in heaven and earth of which philosophy 
does not dream. 

But the characters, not the plot, remain in 
the mind, after reading Villette. Madame Beck, 
whose prototype was Madame Heger, is as 
clever as Cardinal Wolsey or Cardinal Richelieu ; 
but she uses all her diplomatic skill in the 
management of a lady's school, which, under 
her ever watchful eye, with the aid of duplicate 
keys to the trunks and drawers of the teachers 
and pupils, runs without friction of any kind. 



272 Woman's Work in Fiction 

Lucy Snowe, the English teacher in Villette, is 
far more pleasing than Jane Eyre; she is not so 
passionate, but her view of life is deeper and 
broader, and consequently kinder. And there 
is Paul Emanuel. Who would have believed the 
rejected professor would have grown into that 
scholar of middle age? He is so distinctly the 
foreigner in showing every emotion under which 
he is labouring. How pathetic and how lovable 
he is on the day of his fete when he thinks that 
the English governess has forgotten him, and 
has not brought even a flower to make the day 
happier for him! So fretful in little things, so 
heroic in large things, with so many faults which 
every pupil can see, but with so many virtues, 
frank even about his little deceptions, he is a 
lovable man. But many of Miss Bronte's 
readers do not find Paul Emanuel as delightful 
as Paulina, the womanly little girl who grows 
into the childlike woman. She is as sensitive 
as the mimosa plant to the people about her. 
Every event of her childhood, all the people she 
cared for then, remained indelibly imprinted on 
her mind, so that, with her, friendship and love 
are strong and abiding. 

Notwithstanding their many defects, Char- 
lotte Bronte's novels have left a permanent 
impression upon English fiction and have won 
an acknowledged place among English classics. 
She first made a minute analysis of the varying 



Charlotte Bronte 273 

emotions of men and women, and noted the 
strange, unaccountable attractions and repul- 
sions which everybody has experienced. Paulina, 
a girl of six, is happy at the feet of Graham, a 
boy of sixteen, although he is unconscious of her 
presence. And so instance after instance can 
be given of affinities and antipathies which lie 
beyond human reason. She, like her sister 
Emily, though with less clear vision, was search- 
ing for the hidden sources of human feeling 
and human action. 

Charlotte Bronte wrote to a friend: 
"I always through my whole life liked to 
penetrate to the real truth; I like seeking the 
goddess in her temple, and handling the veil, 
and daring the dread glance." 

Her truthfulness in painting emotion, which 
to her own generation seemed most daring, 
even coarse, has given an abiding quality to her 
work. And besides she created Paulina and 
Paul Emanuel. 
18 



CHAPTER XVI 

Mrs. Gaskell 

EVER since Eve gave Adam of the forbidden 
fruit, "and he did eat," the relative 
position of the sexes has rankled in the heart 
of man. The sons of Adam proclaim loudly 
that they were given dominion over the earth 
and all that the earth contained ; but they have 
been ever ready to follow blindly the beckoning 
finger of some fair daughter of Eve. Perhaps 
it is a consciousness of this domination of the 
weaker sex that has led man to proclaim in such 
loud tones his mastery over woman, having 
some doubts of its being recognised by her 
unless asserted in bold language. At a time 
when the novels of women received as warm a 
welcome from the public and as large checks 
from the publishers as those of men, a writer 
whose sex need not be given thus discussed 
their relative merits: 

"What is woman, regarded as a literary 
worker? Simply an inferior animal, educated 
as an inferior animal. And what is man? He 
274 



Mrs. Gaskell 275 

is a superior being, educated by a superior 
being. So how can they ever be equal in that 
particular line?" 

Granted the premises, there can be but one 
conclusion. 

The perfect assurance with which men have 
asserted their own sufficiency in all lines of art 
would be amusing if it had not been so dis- 
astrous in distorting and warping at least three 
of them: music, the drama, and prose fiction. 
As slow as the growth of spirituality, has been 
the recognition of woman's mental and moral 
power. It seems almost incredible that not 
many years ago only male voices were heard in 
places of amusement. Deep, rich, full, and 
sonorous, no one disputes the beauty of the male 
chorus; but modern opera would be impossible 
without the soprano and alto voices, and Ma- 
dame Patti, Madame Sembrich, and Madame 
Lehman have proved that in natural gifts and 
in the technique of art women are not inferior 
to their brethren. 

By the same slow process women have won 
recognition on the stage. Even in Shake- 
speare's time men saw no reason why women 
should acquire the histrionic art. Imagine 
Juliet played by a boy! Yet Essex, Leices- 
ter, Southampton, in the boxes, the ground- 
lings in the pit, and Ben Jonson sitting as 
critic of all, were well satisfied with it, for they 



276 Woman's Work in Fiction 

were used to it, just as men have accepted 
the heroines of their own novels, though every 
woman they meet is a refutation of their truth. 
It only needed a woman in a woman's part to 
open the eyes of the audience to all they had 
missed before. Not until the Restoration, did 
any woman appear on the English stage. The 
following lines given in the prologue written 
for the revival of Othello, in which the part of 
Desdemona was acted for the first time by a 
woman, show how quick critics were to see the 
folly of the old custom : 

For to speak truth, men act, that are between 
Forty and fifty, wenches of fifteen, 
With bone so large, and nerve so uncompliant, 
When you call Desdemona, enter Giant. 

As we cannot conceive of the English stage 
without such women as Mrs. Siddons, Charlotte 
Cushman, and Ellen Terry, so we cannot con- 
ceive of the English novel without such writers 
as Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen, Mary Mit- 
ford, the Brontes, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George 
Eliot, each one of whom carried some phase 
of the novel to so high a point that she has stood 
pre-eminent in her own particular line. Too 
often we confuse art with its subject-matter. 
If it requires as much skill to give interest to the 
everyday occurrences of the home as to the 
thrilling adventures abroad; to depict the life 



Mrs. Gaskell 277 

of women as the life of men; to reveal the joys 
and sorrows of a woman's heart as the exulta- 
tions and griefs of man's; then these women 
deserve a place equal to that held by Richard- 
son, Fielding, Scott, Dickens, and Thackeray. 
Their art, as their subject-matter, is different. 
With the exception of George Eliot, they have 
not virility with its strength and power, but 
they have femininity, no less strong and power- 
ful, a quality possessed by Scott, but by no 
other of these masculine writers, with the 
possible exception of Dickens, and in him it is 
a femininity, which tends to run to sentimen- 
talism, a different characteristic. 

Elizabeth Gaskell, one of the most feminine 
of writers, is so well known as the author of 
Crawford, that delightful village whose only 
gentleman dies early in the story, that many 
of its readers do not know that its author was 
better known by her contemporaries through 
her humanitarian novels, in which she dis- 
cussed the great problems that face the poor. 

Mrs. Gaskell, whose maiden name was Ste- 
venson, was born in Chelsea in 1810. She 
spent the greater part of her childhood and girl- 
hood at the home of her mother's family, Knuts- 
ford in Cheshire, the place she afterward made 
famous under the name of Cranford. In 1832, 
she married the Reverend William Gaskell, 



278 Woman's Work in Fiction 

minister of the Unitarian chapel in Manchester, 
and that city became her home. She took an 
active interest in all the affairs of the city, and 
constantly visited the poor. Her husband's 
father, besides being the professor of English 
History and Literature in Manchester New 
College, a Unitarian institution, was a manu- 
facturer; thus Mrs. Gaskell had the opportunity 
of hearing both sides of the controversy which 
was then waging between labour and capital. 

In the early forties, there was much suffering 
among the "mill-hands"; many were dying of 
starvation, and consequently there were many 
strikes and uprisings. These conditions led to 
her writing her first novel, Mary Barton. The 
book was written during the years 1 845-1 847, 
although it was not published until 1848. The 
nucleus of it, Mrs. Gaskell wrote to a friend, 
was John Barton. Since she herself was con- 
stantly wondering at the inequalities of fortune, 
which permitted some to starve, while others 
had abundance, how must it affect an ignorant 
man, himself on the verge of starvation, and 
filled with pity for the sufferings of his friends? 
Driven almost insane by the condition of society, 
and hoping to remedy it, he commits a crime, 
which preys so upon his conscience that it finally 
wears out his own life. 

Mrs. Gaskell in this, her first novel, has left 
an undying picture of that section of smoky 



Mrs. Gaskell 279 

Manchester where the mill-workers live: its 
narrow lanes; small but not uncomfortable 
cottages, well supplied with furniture in days 
when work was plentiful, but destitute even of 
a fire when it was scarce; the undersized men 
and women, with irregular features, pale blue 
eyes, sallow complexions, but with an intelli- 
gence rendered quick and sharp by their life 
among the machinery, and by their hard strug- 
gle for existence. The life of the poor had 
often furnished a theme for the poets, but it was 
the life of shepherds and milkmaids, above whom 
the blue sky arched, and whose labours were 
brightened by the songs of the birds, and the 
colours and sweet odours of fruit and flowers. 
But Mrs. Gaskell described the life of the poor 
in a town where factory smoke obscured the 
light of the sun, and where the weariness of 
labour was rendered more intense by the clanging 
factory bell, and the constant whirr of machinery 
ringing in their ears. It is a gloomy picture, 
but no gloomier than the reality. 

Disraeli in Sybil discussed the questions of 
labour and capital in their relations to the his- 
tory of England, with a broad intellectual grasp 
of the sociological causes which produced these 
conditions. He wrote in the interests of two 
classes, the Crown and the People, with the 
hope that England might again have a free 
monarchy and a prosperous people. It is a 



280 Woman's Work in Fiction 

well illustrated treatise on government, but the 
principles advocated or discussed always over- 
shadow the characters. He had no such intimate 
knowledge of the lives of the poor as had Mrs. 
Gaskell. She conducts us to the homes of John 
Barton, George Wilson, and Job Legh, shows 
the simplicity of their lives, and their sense of 
the injustice under which they are suffering, and 
their helpfulness to each other in times of need. 
How simple and true is the friendship that 
binds Mary Barton, the dressmaker's appren- 
tice; Margaret, the blind singer; and Alice 
Wilson, the aged laundress, whose mind is con- 
stantly dwelling on the green fields and running 
brooks of her childhood's home. These women 
possess the strength of character of the early 
Teutonic women. They are reticent, not given 
to the exchange of confidences, but ready to 
help a friend with all they have in the hour of 
need. When Margaret thinks that the Bartons 
are in want of money, she says to Mary, " Re- 
member, if you 're sore pressed for money, we 
shall take it very unkind if you do not let us 
know. " But she does not question her. Later 
when her great trouble comes to Mary Barton, 
which she must bear alone, when she must free 
a lover from the charge of murder without in- 
criminating her father, she shows presence of 
mind, clearness of vision, and both moral and 
physical courage. 



Mrs. Gaskell 281 

Jem Wilson, the hero of the story, is as strong 
as Mary Barton, the heroine. Although Dickens 
was writing of the poor, he always found some 
means to educate his heroes, and generally 
placed them among gentlemen. Jem Wilson's 
education was received in the factory, and the 
little rise he made above his fellows was due to 
his better understanding of machinery. He 
was a working man, proud of his skill, and of his 
good name for honesty and sobriety. 

The plot of Mary Barton is highly melo- 
dramatic, and its technique is open to criticism. 
It should not be read, however, for the story, 
but for the many home scenes in which we come 
into close sympathy with the men and women 
of Manchester. There is no novel in which we 
feel more strongly the heart-beats of humanity. 
It leaves the impression, not of art, but of life. 

Mrs. Gaskell turned again to the struggles 
between labour and capital for the plot of her 
novel North and South. Between this story 
and Mary Barton she had written Cranford and 
Ruth, but her mind seemed to revert, as it were, 
from the peaceful village life to the stirring 
mill-towns of Lancashire. The great contrast 
between life in the counties of England pre- 
sided over by the landed gentry, and that in 
the counties where the manufacturers formed 
the aristocracy, suggested this book. It was 
published in 1855, seven years after Mary 



282 Woman's Work in Fiction 

Barton. The plot of North and South is better 
proportioned than is that of Mary Barton. 
There are fewer characters, better contrasted. 
It is a brighter picture, with more humour, but 
it does not leave so strong an impression on the 
mind as does the earlier work. Both, however, 
are more accurate than Hard Times, a book 
with which Dickens himself was highly dis- 
satisfied. He knew little of the life in the 
manufacturing districts, but, in a spirit of indig- 
nation at the poverty brought on by grasping 
manufacturers, he caricatured the entire class 
in the persons of Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Boun- 
derby. When these men are compared with 
the manufacturers as represented in North and 
South, Mrs. Gaskell's more intimate knowledge 
of them is at once apparent. 

Mrs. Gaskell had been accused of taking sides 
with the working men, and representing their 
point of view in Mary Barton. In North and 
South, the hero, Mr. Thornton, is a rich manu- 
facturer, a fine type of the self-made man, but 
standing squarely on his right to do what he 
pleases in his own factory. "He looks like a 
person who would enjoy battling with every 
adverse thing he could meet with — enemies, 
winds, or circumstances," was Margaret Hale's 
comment when she first met him. "He's 
worth fighting wi', is John Thornton," said 
one of the leaders of the strike. For although 



Mrs. Gaskell 283 

the condition of affairs in the mill-towns had 
much improved since John Barton went to 
London as a delegate from his starving towns- 
men, and was refused a hearing by Parliament, 
a large part of the book is concerned with the 
story of a strike, which in its outcome brought 
starvation to many of the men, and bankruptcy 
to some of the masters, the acknowledged 
victors. 

Higgins, one of the leaders of the working men, 
is a true Lancashire man, and like Thornton, 
the leader of the masters, has many traits of 
character as truly American as English. His 
sturdy independence is well shown in Margaret's 
first interview with him. The daughter of a 
vicar in the south of England, she had been 
accustomed to call upon the poor in her fa- 
ther's parish. Learning that Higgins's daughter, 
Bessy, is ill she expresses her desire to call 
upon her. "I 'm none so fond of having 
stranger folk in my house," Higgins informs 
her, but he finally relents and says, "Yo may 
come if yo like." 

But besides the conflict between the manu- 
facturers and their employees, with which much 
of the book is concerned, there is the sharp 
contrast between the Hales, born and bred in 
the south of England, and the mill-owners in 
whose society they are placed. Mr. Hale, 
indecisive, inactive, in whom thought is more 



284 Woman's Work in Fiction 

powerful than reality, is as helpless as a child 
among these men of action, and utterly unable 
to cope with the problems they are facing. 
Margaret, the refined daughter of a poor clergy- 
man, is contrasted with the proud Mrs. Thorn- 
ton, the mother of a wealthy manufacturer, who 
would make money, not birth, the basis of 
social distinctions. But Margaret is even better 
contrasted with the poor factory girl, Bessy 
Higgins, who turns to her for help and sympathy. 
There is hardly a story of Mrs. Gaskell's which 
is not adorned by the friendship of the heroine 
for some other woman in the book. 

In both these novels, she taught that the only 
solution of the great problem of capital and 
labour was a recognition of the fact that their 
interests were identical, and that friendly inter- 
course was the only means of breaking down 
the barrier that divided them. 

Mrs. Gaskell was so versatile, she touched 
upon so many problems of human life, that it 
is almost impossible to summarise her work. 
Ruth considers the question of the girl who has 
been betrayed. Ruth is as pure as Tess of the 
D'Urbervilles, and like her is a victim of cir- 
cumstances. A stranger who has taken her 
under her protection reports that Ruth is a 
widow, and Ruth passively acquiesces in the 
deception, hoping that her son may never know 
the disgrace of his birth. But the truth comes 



Mrs. Gaskell 285 

to light, involving in temporary disgrace Ruth 
and her son, and the household of Mr. Benson, 
the dissenting minister whose home had been 
her place of refuge. But Mrs. Gaskell is always 
optimistic. By her good deeds, Ruth wins the 
love and honour of the entire community. This 
novel was loudly assailed. It was claimed that 
Mrs. Gaskell had condoned immorality, and it 
was considered dangerous teaching that good 
deeds were an atonement for such a sin. But 
if Ruth found detractors, it also found warm 
admirers, who recognised the broader teach- 
ings of the story. Mrs. Jameson wrote to Mrs. 
Gaskell: 

"I hope I do understand your aim — you have 
lifted up your voice against 'that demoralising 
laxity of principle, ' which I regard as the ulcer 
lying round the roots of society; and you have 
done it wisely and well, with a mingled courage 
and delicacy which excite at once my gratitude 
and my admiration." 

The scene of Sylvia's Lovers is laid in Whitby, 
at a time when the press-gang was kidnapping 
men for the British navy. It is a story of the 
loves, jealousies, and sorrows of sailors, shop- 
keepers, and small farmers, among whom Sylvia 
moves as the central figure. Du Maurier, who 
illustrated the second edition of this novel, was 
so charmed with the heroine that he named 
his daughter Sylvia for her. This story, like 



286 Woman's Work in Fiction 

Ruth, has much of the sentimentalism so fash- 
ionable in the middle of the nineteenth century. 
The leading canon of criticism at that time was 
the power with which a writer could move the 
emotions of the reader, and the novelist was 
expected either to convulse his readers with 
laughter or dissolve them into tears. There 
are many funny scenes in Sylvia's Lovers, but 
the key-note is pathos. Like many novels of 
Dickens, there are death-bed scenes introduced 
only for the luxury of weeping over sorrows 
that are not real, and there are melodramatic 
situations as in her other books. Parts of this 
novel suggested to Tennyson the poem of 
Enoch Ay den. 

But, however powerful may be the novels 
dealing with the questions that daily confront 
the poor, there is a perennial charm in the so- 
ciety of people who dwell amid rural scenes. 
Mrs. Gaskell has written several short stories 
of the pastoral type. Such a story is Cousin 
Phillis. It is a beautiful idyl and reminds one 
of the old pastorals in which ladies and gentle- 
men played at shepherds and shepherdesses. 
Cousin Phillis cooks, irons, reads Dante, helps 
the haymakers, falls in love, and mends a broken 
heart, and is brave, true, and unselfish. Her 
father is what one would expect from such a 
daughter. He cultivates his small farm, finds 
rest from his labours in reading, and neglects 



Mrs. Gaskell 287 

none of the many duties which belong to him 
as the dissenting minister of a small village. 

Cranford and Wives and Daughters have this , 
in common, that the scene of both is laid in the 
village of Knutsford. The former is a rambling 
story of events in two or three households, and 
of the social affairs in which all the village is 
concerned. It is without doubt the favourite 
of Mrs. Gaskell's novels. Wives and Daughters 
was Mrs. Gaskell's last story, and was left un- 
finished at her death. It shows a great artistic 
advance over her earlier work. The plot is 
more natural; it has not so many sharp con- 
trasts, which George Eliot criticised in Mrs. 
Gaskell's stories. The characters are also more 
subtle. Molly, the daughter of the village 
doctor, is an unselfish, thoughtful girl, but with 
none of that unreal goodness which Dickens 
sometimes gave to his heroines. When she 
receives her first invitation to a child's party, 
and her father is wondering whether or not she 
can go, her speech is characteristic of her nature : 

"Please, Papa, — I do wish to go — but I don't 
care about it." 

Molly feels very keenly, and longs for things 
with all the strength of an ardent nature, but 
she always subordinates herself and her wishes 
to others. In the character of Cynthia, Mrs. 
Gaskell makes a plea for the heartless coquette. 
Cynthia is beautiful, she likes to please those 



288 Woman's Work in Fiction 

in whose company she finds herself, but quickly 
forgets the absent. It is not her fault that 
young men's hearts are brittle, for it is as natural 
for her to smile, and be gay and forget, as it is 
for Molly to love, be silent, and remember. So 
it is Cynthia who has the lovers, while Molly 
is neglected. Clare, Cynthia's mother, is more 
selfish than her daughter, but she has learned 
the art of seeming to please others while think- 
ing only of pleasing herself. She is as crafty as 
Becky Sharp, but softer, more feline, and more 
subtle; a much commoner type in real life 
than Thackeray's diplomatic heroine. 

Mr. A. W. Ward, in the biographical intro- 
duction to the Knutsford Edition of her novels, 
says of her later work: 

"When Mrs. Gaskell had become conscious 
that if true to herself, to her own ways of look- 
ing at men and things, to the sympathies and 
hopes with which life inspired her, she had but 
to put pen to paper, she found what it has been 
usual to call her later manner — the manner of 
which Cranford offered the first adequate illus- 
tration, and of which Cousin Phillis and Wives 
and Daughters represent the consummation." 

The same critic compares the later work of 
Mrs. Gaskell with the later work of George 
Sand and finds that "in their large-heartedness " 
they are similar. He also gives George Sand's 
tribute to her English contemporary. "Mrs. 



Mrs. Gaskell 289 

Gaskell," she said, "has done what neither I 
nor other female writers in France can accom- 
plish: she has written novels which excite the 
deepest interest in men of the world, and yet 
which every girl will be the better for reading. ' ' 

It is not often that a novelist finds another 
writer to take up and enlarge her work as did 
Mrs. Gaskell. Her novels contain the germ of 
much of George Eliot's earlier writings. The 
Moorland Cottage suggested many parts of The 
Mill on the Floss. Edward and Maggie Brown 
— the former important, consequential and dic- 
tatorial, the latter self-forgetful, eager to help 
others, and by her very eagerness prone to 
blunders — were developed by George Eliot into 
the characters of Tom and Maggie Tulliver. 
The weak and fretful mothers in the two books 
are much alike, while the love story and the 
catastrophe have the same general outline. 

They both drew largely from the working 
people of the North or of the Midlands, and 
both constantly introduced Dissenters. Silas 
Marner belongs to the manufacturing North, 
and the people of Lantern Yard are of the same 
class as those of Manchester and Milton. Felix 
Holt and Adam Bede belong to the same type 
as Jem Wilson and Mr. Thornton, while Esther 
Lyon is not unlike Margaret Hale. Both often 
presented life from the point of view of the poor. 

Both were interested in the development of 



290 Woman's Work in Fiction 

character, and in the changes which it under- 
went for good or evil under the influence of 
outward circumstances. But George Eliot had 
greater intellectual power than Mrs. Gaskell. 
She had the broader view and the deeper insight. 
Mrs. Gaskell could never have conceived the 
plots nor the characters of Romola nor Middle- 
march. She constantly introduced extraneous 
matter to shape her plots according to her will, 
while with George Eliot the fate of character is 
as hard and unyielding as was the fate of predes- 
tination in the sermons p of the old Calvinistic 
divines. Mrs. Gaskell, like Dickens, introduced 
death-bed scenes merely to play upon the emo- 
tions. George Eliot was never guilty of this 
defect; with her, character is a fatalism that is 
inexorable. 

But Mrs. Gaskell had a more hopeful view 
of life than had George Eliot. The Unitarians 
believe in man and have faith in the clemency 
of God. This makes them a cheerful people. 
However dark the picture that Mrs. Gaskell 
paints, we have faith that conditions will soon 
be better, and at the close of the book we see 
the dawn of a brighter day. George Eliot had 
taken the suggestions of Mrs. Gaskell and ampli- 
fied them with many details that the woman 
of lesser genius had omitted. But to each was 
given her special gift. If George Eliot's char- 
acters stand out as more distinct personalities, 



Mrs. Gaskell 291 

they are drawn with less sympathy. George 
Eliot's men and women are often hard and sharp 
in outline; Mrs. Gaskell's, no matter how poor 
or ignorant, are softened and refined. 

It was this quality that made it possible for 
her to write that inimitable comedy of manners, 
Cranford. Her other novels with their deep 
pathos, strong passion, and dramatic situations 
must be read to show the breadth of her powers, 
but Cranford will always give its author a unique 
place in literature. Imagine the material that 
furnished the groundwork of this story put into 
the hands of any novelist from Richardson to 
Henry James. It seems almost like sacrilege 
to think what even Jane Austen might have 
said of these dear elderly ladies. As for Thack- 
eray, their little devices to keep up appearances 
would have seemed to him instances of feminine 
deceit, and he might have put even Miss Jen- 
kyns with her admiration of Dr. Johnson into 
his Book of Snobs. What tears Dickens would 
have drawn from our eyes over the love story 
of Miss Matty and Mr. Holbrook. How George 
Eliot would have mourned over the shallow- 
ness of their lives. Henry James would have 
squinted at them and their surroundings through 
his eye-glass until he had discovered every faded 
spot on the carpet or skilful darn in the curtain. 
Miss Mitford would have appreciated these 
ladies and loved them as did Mrs. Gaskell, only 



292 Woman's Work in Fiction 

she would have been so interested in the flowers 
and birds and clouds that she would have for- 
gotten all about the Cranford parties, and would 
probably have ignored the presence in their 
midst of the Honourable Mrs. Jamieson, the 
sister-in-law of an earl. So we must conclude 
that only Mrs. Gaskell could make immortal this 
village of femininity, where to be a man was 
considered almost vulgar, but into which she 
has introduced one of the most chivalrous 
gentlemen in the person of Captain Browne, 
and one of the most faithful of lovers in the 
person of Mr. Holbrook, while no book has 
a more lovable heroine than fluttering, indeci- 
sive Miss Matty, over whose fifty odd years the 
sorrows of her youth have cast their lengthening 
shadows. 

Mary Barton is a work of genius. Only a 
woman of high ideals could have drawn the 
character of Margaret Hale, an earlier Marcella, 
or Molly Gibson, or Mr. Thornton, or Mr. Hol- 
man. Only a woman of deep insight could have 
created a woman like Ruth : a book which in its 
problem and its deep earnestness reminds one 
of Aurora Leigh. But her readers will always 
love Mrs. Gaskell for the sake of the gentle 
ladies of Cranford. 



CONCLUSION 

MRS. GASKELL died on the twelfth of 
November, 1865. Of the novelists who 
have been considered in this book only three 
survived her, Mrs. Bray, Mrs. S. C. Hall, and 
Harriet Martineau, but they added little to prose 
fiction after that date. During the third quarter 
of the nineteenth century, however, the number 
of books written by women continued to in- 
crease each year. Julia Kavanagh was the 
author of several novels, the first of which 
The Three Paths, was published in 1848; all her 
stories were written with high moral aim and 
delicacy of feeling. Uncle Tom's Cabin, by 
Harriet Beecher Stowe, published in 1850, is 
probably the most powerful novel ever written 
to plead the cause of oppressed humanity. 
Dinah Maria Muloch Craik kept up the interest 
in the domestic novel; her most popular book, 
John Halifax, Gentleman, has lost none of its 
charm for young women, even if it does not meet 
the requirements of a classic. Mrs. Henry Wood 
is still remembered as the author of the melo- 
dramatic East Lynne, but her best stories are the 
293 



2Q4 



Woman's Work in Fiction 



Johnny Ludlow Papers, which deal with char- 
acter alone; her popularity is attested by the 
fact that more than a million copies of her books 
have been issued. Charlotte Yonge's forgotten 
novels were classed among the Church Stories, 
because they contain so much piety and de- 
votion. Of a different type was Miss de la 
Ram£e, who wrote under the name of Ouida; 
she had fine gifts of word-painting, but a fond- 
ness for the questionable in conduct. Miss 
Braddon, the author of Lady Audley's Secret, 
excelled in complicated plots. Mrs. Oliphant 
has been a most versatile writer, and followed 
almost every style of prose fiction; her do- 
mestic stories are generally considered her best. 
Anne Thackeray, better known as Mrs. Ritchie, 
the daughter of the great novelist, has written 
several novels, all of which have a delightfully 
feminine touch. Miss Rhoda Broughton has 
entertained the reading public by love stories 
which hold the attention until the marriage takes 
place. But all these women fade into insig- 
nificance beside George Eliot, whose first story, 
The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton, 
appeared in Blackwood's Magazine in 1857, and 
whose last novel, Daniel Deronda, was published 
nearly twenty years later, in 1876. 

It seems strange that any reader of her books 
should have thought them the product of a 
man's brain, as was at first believed. For, 



Conclusion 295 

notwithstanding her power in developing a plot, 
her breadth of view, and her mental grasp, her 
genius is essentially feminine. She excelled 
in analysis of character, in attention to details, 
in ethical teaching, and in artistic truthfulness, 
the qualities in which women have been pre- 
eminent. Only a woman's pen could have 
drawn such characters as Dinah Morris, Mag- 
gie Tulliver, and Dorothea Casaubon, or could 
have followed the minute and subtle influences 
under which the plot of Middlemarch is shaped. 
George Eliot has left a larger portrait gallery 
of women than any other novelist. Not only 
has she drawn different grades of society, but, 
what is perhaps a more difficult task, she has 
drawn the different grades of spiritual greatness 
and moral littleness. She brought the psycho- 
logical novel to a degree of perfection which has 
never been surpassed. 

Mrs. Oliphant has thus written of George El- 
iot's place in literature: 

"Another question which has been constantly 
put to this age, and which is pushed with 
greater zeal every day, as to the position of 
women in literature and the height which it is 
in their power to attain, was solved by this 
remarkable woman, in a way most flattering 
to all who were and are fighting the question of 
equality between the two halves of mankind; 
for here was visibly a woman who was to be 



296 Woman's Work in Fiction 

kept out by no barriers, who sat down quietly 
from the beginning of her career in the highest 
place, and, if she did not absolutely excel all 
her contemporaries in the revelation of the 
human mind and the creation of new human 
beings, at least was second to none in those 
distinguishing characteristics of genius." 

We are too near the nineteenth century to 
decide as to the relative positions of its great 
novelists. At one time George Eliot was placed 
at the head of all writers of fiction, with Dick- 
ens and Thackeray as rivals for the second place. 
But she was dethroned by Thackeray, and there 
are signs that the final kingship will be given to 
Charles Dickens, unless Scott receives it instead. 

Fashions in novels change at least every fifty 
years. Exciting plots and situations, strong 
emotional scenes, sharp contrasts, are not de- 
manded by present readers, who also turn away 
with disgust from the saintly heroine and the irre- 
claimable villain. Of the many volumes of fiction 
written in the eighteenth century only two are 
in general circulation to-day, Robinson Crusoe 
and The Vicar of Wakefield. But all those once 
popular novels, even if their very names are 
now forgotten, have done their work in shaping 
the thought and morals of their own and suc- 
ceeding generations. 



INDEX 

Abbott, The, 137 

Absentee, The, 61, 112-113, 122 

Ada Reis, 203 

Adam Bede, 84, 289, 295 

Addison, Joseph, 21, 28 

Adeline Mowbray, or the Mother and Daughter, 150-153 

Adventures of an Atom, 23 

Afflicted Parent, The, or the Undutiful Child Punished, 

Age of Wordsworth, The, 193 
Agnes Grey, 258—259, 261, 265 
Ainsworth, William Harrison, 216, 239 
Alderson, Miss, see Opie, Amelia 
Amorous Friars, or the Intrigues of a Convent, 42 
Amos Barton, 294 

Amours of Prince Tarquin and Miranda, 18 
Antiquary, The, 102, 104 
Arabian Nights, 15, 233 
Arblay, Madame D', see Burney, Frances 
Arblay, Madame D', Essay on, 57-58, 61, 168-169 
Arden, Enoch, 187 
Arnold, Matthew, 257 
Artless Tales, 139 
Athenceum, The, 194, 256 
Aurora Leigh, 292 

Austen, Jane, 39, 45, 60, 101, 157-178, 179, 180, 191, 
195, 196, 216, 263, 270, 276, 291 

Baillie, Joanna, 154, 155 

Balzac, Honore" de, 170 

Banker's Wife, The, 225 

Barbauld, Mrs. Anna Letitia, 121 

Barrett, Miss, see Browning, Elizabeth 

Barring Out, The, 125 

Bas Bleu, 62, 63 

Beauty Put to its Shifts, or the Young Virgin's Rambles, 42 

297 



298 Index 



Behn, Aphra, i, 13-19 

Belford Regis, 193-196 

Belinda, 121, 177 

Beside the Bonny Brier Bush, 137 

Betsy Thoughtless, Miss, The History of, 36-39, 46, 48 

Bithynia, An Adventure in, 233 

Blackwood' s Magazine, 107, 294 

Blake, William, 2 

Blazing World, Description of a New World Called the, 

6-7 
Blessington, Lady, 232, 233 
Blind Harry the Minstrel, 143, 144 
Bonheur, Rosa, 1 
Book of Snobs, The, 291 
Boswell, James, 138 
Bousset, 3 

Braddon, Mary Elizabeth, 294 
Bray, Ann Eliza, 216, 225-230, 232, 293 
Bride of Lammermoor, The, 256 
Bronte, Anne, 249, 250, 257-261 
Bronte, Charlotte, 85, 174, 210, 249, 250, 256, 258, 

261-273 
Bronte, Emily, 248, 249-257, 258, 267, 270, 271, 273 
Brontes, The, 247-273, 276 
Brooke and Brooke Farm, 242 
Broughton, Rhoda, 294 

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 81, 103, 190, 242 
Brunton, Alexander, 156 
Brunton, Mary, 41, 149, 153-156, 262 
Bubbled Knights, or Successful Contrivances, 42 
Bulwer, Edward, Lord Lytton, 200, 216, 223 
Burke, Edmund, 46, 54, 62 
Burney, Charles, 46 

Burney, Frances, 39, 45-61, 168, 176, 177, 181, 195 
Byron, Lord (George Gordon), 109, 200-206, 210-213, 

257 

Caleb Williams, 73 

Camilla, or a Picture of Youth, 59-60, 176, 177 

Canterbury Tales, The, 106- no 

Caroline Evelyn, The History of, 47 

Carter, Elizabeth, 62 

Castle of Otranto, The, 88 

Castle Rackrent, 111-112, 117 

Castles of Athlyn and Dunbayne, 89 



Index 



299 



Cavendish, Margaret, see Newcastle, Duchess of 
Cavendish, William, see Newcastle, Duke of 
Cecil, or the Adventures of a Coxcomb, 217-219 
Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress, 54-59, 60, 61, 78, 

176, 177 
Celestina, 80 
Chap-Books, 67 
Chapone, Hester, 62 
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 106 
Cheap Repository, The, 67-71 
Childe Harold, 200, 219 
Clarendon, Earl of (Edward Hyde), to 
Clarissa Harlowe, 8, 26, 30, 171 
Clelia, 32 
Clubman, The, 219 
Coelebs in Search of a Wife, 71-72 
Coleridge, Ernest Hartley, 109 
Collier, Jeremy, 61 
Colman, George, 42, 43, 46 
Confessions of a Pretty Woman, 233 
Congreve, William, 217 
Cooper, James Fenimore, 16 
Corneille, 3 

Cottagers of Glenburnie, The, 16 
Cottin, Sophie, Madame de, 262 
Court Gazette, 20 

Courtenay of Walreddon; a Romance of the West, 227 
Cousin Phillis, 286-287, 288, 292 
Crabbe, George, 263 
Craik, Dinah Maria Muloch, 293 
Craik's English Prose, 245 
Cranford, 277, 281, 287, 288, 291-292 
Crewe, Catherine, 232 
Cry of the Children, The, 242 
Curtis, George William, 174 

Daniel Deronda, 294 

Dante, Alighieri, 286 

David Copperfield, 164 

David Simple, 26-31 

Deerbrook, 243 

Defoe, Daniel, 146 

De Foix, or Sketches of the Manners and Customs of the 

Fourteenth Century, 226 
Desmond, 74-77, 80 



300 Index 



Destiny, 181, 182, 183, 185, 186-187 

Diana of the Crossways, 103 

Dickens, Charles, 56, 69, 76, 77, 87, 102, 116, 164, 231, 

236, 240, 247, 264, 268, 269, 277, 281, 282, 286, 

290, 291, 296 
Discipline, 155 

Disraeli, Benjamin, 87, 200, 216, 247, 269, 279 
Dombey and Son, 225 

Domestic Manners of the Americans, 235-236 
Dryden, John, 13 
Duchess of Malfi, The, 256 
Du Maurier, 285 

East Lynne, 293 

Edgeworth, Maria, 102, 111-128, 130, 131, 133, 155, 

179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 196, 197, 216, 243, 276 
Edgeworth, Richard Lovell, 115, 118, 119, 121, 124 
Eighteenth Century, History of the, 44 
Elia, see Lamb, Charles 
Eliot, George, 84, 109, 119, 164, 174, 276, 277, 289-291, 

294-296 
Emma, 161-162, 166-167, 168, 170 
Emmeline, 155 
Ennui, 113, 122 
Enoch ]Araen, 286 
Epipsychidion, 214 

Essay on Irish Bulls, see Irish Bulls, Essay on 
Essay on Madame D'Arblay, see Arblay, Madame D', 

Essay on 
Ethelinda, 79 

Evans, Marian, see Eliot, George 
Evelina, or a Young Lady's Entrance into the World, 39, 

46, 47-54, 55, 59, 61, 78, 164, 176, 177 
Evelvn, John, 5 
Evening Chronicle, 231 
Examiner, 22 

Fair Jilt, The, 18 

Falkland, 200, 216 

Falkner, 214 

Fantom, Mr.: or the History of the New-Fashioned 

Philosopher, and his Ad an William, 68, 72 
Felix Holt, 289 

Female Education, Strictures on the Modern System of, 71 
Female Quixote, The, 32-35 



Index 



301 



Ferrier, Susan Edmonstone, 179-188, 189, 216 

Fielding, Henry, 16, 24, 25, 26, 27, 34, 48, 101, 116, 277 

Fielding, Sarah, 23, 24, 26-31 

Fitz of Fitz-Ford, 227 

Flies in Amber, 233 

Florence Macarthy, 129 

Fortnightly Review, 185 

Fox, Charles James, 40 

Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, 206-207, 215 

Fraser's Magazine, 231 

Froissart's Chronicles, 226 

Gait, John, 216 

Garnett, Sir Richard, 214 

Garrick, David, 41, 46, 62 

Garrison, William Lloyd, 245 

Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn, 247, 267, 269, 270, 

274-293 
Genlis, Stephanie Felicite, Comtesse de, 118, 262 
Gentleman's Magazine, The, 10 1 
Gibbon, Edward, 54 
Glenarvon, 200-203 
Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, see Wollstonecraft, 

Mary 
Godwin, William, 73, 150, 179, 205, 210, 221 
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 174 
Goldsmith, Oliver, 79 

Gore, Catherine Grace Frances, 216-225, 233 
Gosse, Edmund, 170 
Grand Cyrus, The, 15, 32, 121 
Gulliver's Travels, 23 
Guy Mannering, 102 

Hackney Coachman, The, 70 

Hall, Anna Maria (Mrs. S. C), 72, 179, 196-199, 216, 

293 

Hall, S. C, 140 

Hamilton, Elizabeth, 133-137 

Hamiltons, The, 224 

Hamlet, 271 

Hard Times, 282 

Hardy, Thomas, 86, 170 

Harriet Stuart, The Life of, 31 

Harry, Blind, the Minstrel, see Blind Harry the Min- 
strel 



302 Index 

Haywood, Eliza, 24, 36-39, 48 
Heir of Selwood, The, 223, 225 
Helen, 119 
Henrietta, 35 
Henry de Pomeroy, 227 
Henry Esmond, 145 
He planter on, The, 2 
Herford, C. H., 193 

Hints towards Forming the Character of a Young Prin- 
cess, 71 
Homer, 2, 11, 175 
Horace, 217 

Hour and the Man, The, 242, 244-245 
Huet, Bishop, Pierre Daniel, 46 
Humphry Clinker, 8, 24, 44 
Hungarian Brothers, 139 

Ibrahim, 32, 121 

Ida, or the Woman of Athens, 131 

Impetuous Lover, The, or the Guiltless Parricide, 43 

Inchbald, Elizabeth, 41, 73, 82-87, 105, 119, 221, 262 

Inheritance, The, 181, 182-183, 184, 185, 187-188 

Irish Bulls, Essay on, 1 1 5-1 16 

Irish Peasantry, Stories of the, 197, 198 

Italian, The, 91, 94, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101 

Ivanhoe, 164 

Jackson, Helen Hunt (H. H.), 16 

James, G. P. R., 216, 239 

James, Henry, 291 

Jameson, Mrs. (Anna), 285 

Jane Eyre, 41, 82, 85, 250, 261, 263, 264-267, 270, 

272 
Jealous Wife, The, 233 
Jeffrey, Francis, 180 
Joan of Arc, 1 

John Halifax, Gentleman, 293 
Johnny Ludlow Papers, 294 
Johnson, R. Brimley, 245 
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 30, 31, 32, 39, 42, 46, 48, 55, 60, 

62, 103, 128, 138, 291 
Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw, The Life and Adventures 

of, 237-239, 242 
Jonson, Ben, 275 
Joseph Andrews, 16, 36, 52 



Index 303 



Journey to Bath, 41 

Jules Verne, see Verne, Jules 

Kauffman, Angelica, 103 

Kavanagh, Julia, 293 

King Lear, see Lear 

Knox, John, 188 

Kruitzener, or the German's Tale, 108-109 

Lady Audley's Secret, 294 

Lady Clare, 183 

Lady of Lyons, The, 223 

Lady's Magazine, 190 

Lafayette, Madame de, 3, 19, 41, 262 

Lamb, Lady Caroline, 200-204 

Lamb, Charles, 8, 12, 193 

Lamb, William (Lord Melbourne), 200, 201, 202, 203, 

204 
Landlady's Tale, The, 109 
Lang, Andrew, 102 
Lanier, Sidney, 25 
Last Man, The, 210-212 
Lazy Lawrence, 125, 126 
Lear, King, 256 
Lee, Harriet, 88, 105-110 
Lee, Sophia, 88, 105-110, 139 
Lennox, Charlotte, 24, 31-36 
Letters of the Duchess of Neivcastle, 7-8 
Letters to Young Ladies, 62 
Lewis, Matthew Gregory, 10 1 
"Library of Old Authors," Russell Smith, 12 
Life of the Duke of Newcastle, see Newcastle, Life of the 

Duke of 
Lights and Shadows of Irish Life, 197-198 
Lilly Dawson, The Story of, 232 
Literary Gazette, 202 
Lodore, 212-214 
Longueville, Duchesse de, 3 
Lucius, 22 
Lytton, Bulwer, see Bulwer, Edward (Lord Lytton) 

Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 57, 61, 113, 168 

Machiavelli, Niccolo, 207 

Mackay, Sheriff, 143 

Magyar, The, and the Moslem, 233 



304 Index 

Man and Superman, 160 

Manchester Strike, A, 243 

Manley, Mary, 1, 19-23, 36 

Mansfield Park, 61, 162-164, 171, 172 

Marcella, 292 

Margaret, Queen of Navarre, 2 

Marriage, 181, 182, 184 

Marsh, Anne, 231 

Martineau, Harriet, 231, 232, 242-246, 269, 293 

Mary Barton, 269, 278-281, 282, 283, 289, 292 

Masson, David, 179 

Maturin, Charles Robert, 10 1 

Mazeppa, 206 

Memoires du Comte de Comminges, 262 

Memoir es pour servir a Vhistoire de la vertu, 42 

Memoirs of a Certain Island Adjacent to Utopia, 36 

Michael Armstrong, The Life and Adventures of, 241 

Middlemarch, 290, 295 

Midsummer Eve, a Fairy Tale of Love, 198-199 

Mill on the Floss, The, 289, 295 

Mitford, Mary Russell, 81, 144, 179, 183, 189-196, 216, 

221, 227, 276, 291, 292 
Monastery, The, 137, 271 
Monk, The, 10 1 
Montagu, Elizabeth, 62 
Montagu, Mary Wortley, 233 
Monthly Review, 77 

Monumental Effigies of Great Britain, 226 
Moore, Thomas, 131 
Moorland Cottage, The, 289 
More, Hannah, 62-72, 73 
Morgan, Lady, in, 197, 216 
Music, History of, 46 
Mysteries of Udolpho, The, 91, 92, 94, 95, 96, 99, 101, 

104, 105, 141 

Nature and Art, 85-86 

Nature's Pictures Drawn by Fancy's Pencil, 7 

New Atalantis, 19-23 

Newcastle, Duchess of, 1, 3-13 

Newcastle, Duke of, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 

Newcastle, Life of the Duke of, 10-12 

Nodes AmbrosiancB, 183 

Nocturnal Reverie, 79 

North, Christopher (John James Wilson), 183, 185 



Index 305 



North and South, 281-284, 289, 292 
Northanger Abbey, 101, 160-161, 177 
Notre Dame de Paris, 256 
"Novelists' Library," 121 
Novels by Eminent Hands, 217 
Nun, The, or the Perjured Duty, 18 

O'Briens, The, and the 0' Flaherty s, 129, 130-13 1 

O'Donnel, 129-130 

Odyssey, 113 

Old English Baron, The, 88, 89 

Old Manor House, The, 77-78, 79, 80 

Oliphant, Mrs. Margaret, 294, 295 

Opie, Mrs. Amelia, 41, 73, 149-153, 156, 216, 262 

Orange Girl of St. Giles's, The, 69-70 

Ormond, 113-115 

Oroonoko, 13-18, 237, 242 

Orphans, The, 126 

Othello, 276 

Ouida, 294 

Our Village, 189, 190-193, 195, 196, 243 

Owenson, Sydney, see Morgan, Lady 

Pamela, 8, 17, 18, 24, 31, 35, 46, 78, 164, 266 

Paradise Lost, 72, 79 

Pardoe, Julia, 231-234 

Pastor's Fireside, The, 146 

Patronage, 119 

Pelham, 200 

Pendennis, 200 

Perkin Warbeck, The Fortunes of, 214 

Persuasion, 158, 162-164, 167, 170, 172 

Phillips, Wendell, 244 

Pickwick Papers, 56 

Pilgrimages to English Shrines, 72 

Pin Money, 222-223 

Plato, 11 

Political Economy Tales, 242-243 

Polly Honeycomb, 42, 43 

Pope, Alexander, 22, 79, 160 

Porter, Anna Maria, 133, 137-140, 216 

Porter, Jane, 133, 137, 138, 140-148, 216 

Preferment, or My Uncle the Earl, 220 

PreVost, Abbe, 42 

so 



306 Index 

Pride and Prejudice, 157, 158-159, 161, 164, 166, 170, 

171, 173, 175, 176, 178 
Princess of Cleves, The, 41, 262 
Professor, The, 270 

Quarterly Review, 131, 147, 148 

Radcliffe, Ann, 88, 89-105, 108, 179, 270 

Rambouillet, Marquise de, 3 

Ramee, Louise de la, see Ouida 

Ramsey, Charlotte, see Lennox, Charlotte 

Rape of the Lock, 22 

Rasselas, 46 

Recess, The, 105-106 

Reeve, Clara, 88-89 

Refugee in America, The, 237 

Richardson, Samuel, 8, 9, 17, 24, 26, 30, 31, 34, 36, 37, 

48, 101, 154, 171, 277, 291 
Rights of Man, 64 
Rights of Woman, Vindication of the, see Vindication of 

the Rights of Woman 
Ritchie, Mrs., 126, 294 
Rival Beauties, The, 233 
Rivals, The, 41, 43 
Rob Roy, 102 
Robinson Crusoe, 146, 296 
Rogers, Samuel, 201 

Romance of the Forest, The, 91, 92, 93, 97, 101 
Romance of the Harem, The, 233 
Romance of the West, A, 228 
Romeo and Juliet, 275 
Romola, 290 

Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 73, 118 
Ruskin, 195 
Ruth, 281, 284-285, 286, 292 

St. Ronan's Well, 174 

Saintsbury, George, 185, 186 

Sand, George, 262, 263, 288 

Sappho, 1 

Schlosser, 44 

Scott, Sir Walter, 18, 36, 102, 103, 104, 105, 118, 128, 
141, 144, 155, 164, 173, 179, 180, 181, 184, 216, 
225, 228, 229, 230, 264, 271, 277, 296 

Scottish Chiefs, The, 142-145 



Index 307 

Scuderi, Mile, de, 3, 19, 32, ^^, 35, 120, 121 

Seasons, The, 79 

Secret Intrigues of the Count of Caramania, The, 36 

Selborne, The Natural History and Antiquities of, 191 

Self -Control, 154-155, 156 

Sense and Sensibility, 159-160, 161, 170, 171 

Sevigne\ Madame, de, 3 

Shakespeare, William, 5, 103, 128, 168, 169, 170, 174, 

271, 275 
Shakespeare, Essay on the Genius of, 62 
Shaw, Bernard, 160 
Shelley, Mary, 200, 204-215, 262 
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 204, 205, 206, 208, 210-214 
Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, The, 68, 69, 72 
Sheridan, Mrs. Frances, 24, 39-42 
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 40, 41 
Shirley, 267-270 
Sicilian Romance, The, 91, 93, 94 
Sidney Biddulph, The Memoirs of Miss, 39-42, 74 
Silas Marner, 289 
Simple Story, A, 82-84, 262 
Simple Susan, 126-127 
Simple Tales, 153 
Sir Charles Grandison, 8, 37, 53 
Sir Edward Seaward's Narrative, 146-148 
Sister, The, 35 
Sketches by Boz, 241 
Sketches of English Character, 219-220 
Sketches of Irish Character, 196-197 
Smith, Charlotte, 41, 73-82, 87, 102, 103, 105, 191, 221 
Smith Russell, "Library of Old Authors," see "Library 

of Old Authors" 
Smollett, Tobias, 8, 23, 24, 88, 10 1, 179 
Soldier of Lyons, The, a Tale of the Tuilcries, 223 
Sothern, Thomas, 13, 15 
Souza, Madame de, 262 
Spectator Papers, 7, 29 

Stael, Madame de (Anne Louise Necker), 262, 263 
Steele, Richard, 21, 22, 28 
Sterne, Laurence, 24, 25, 88, 102, 169 
Stories of the Irish Peasantry, see Irish Peasantry, Stories 

of the 
Stothard, Charles, 226 
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 15, 238, 293 
Swift, Jonathan, 22, 23 



3o8 



Index 



Swinburne, Charles Algernon, 256 
Sybil, 269, 279 
Sylvia's Lovers, 285-286 

Taine, 25 

Talba, The, or Moor of Portugal, 226 

Tale of Two Cities, 145 

Tales of Fashionable Life, 11 9-1 20 

Tales of my Landlord, The, 181 

Tales of Real Life, 153 

Tales that Never Die, 127 

Toiler, The, 22, 29 

Tenant of Wild fell Hall, The, 259-261 

Tencin, Mme. de, 262 

Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 183, 286 

Tess of the D'Urbervilles, 284 

Thackeray, Anna Isabella, see Ritchie, Mrs. 

Thackeray, William Makepeace, 87, 102, 116, 120, 164, 

176, 216, 217, 231, 237, 247, 264, 277, 288, 291, 296 
Thaddeus of Warsaw, 1 40-141 
Theresa Marchmont, 217 
Thomas the Rhymer, 104 
Thrale, Mrs. (Mrs. Piozzi), 48 
Three Paths, The, 293 
T intern Abbey, 93 
Tolstoi, Count Leo, 86, 1 70 
Tom Jones, 26, 37, 53, 141 
TourgeniefT, 170 
Trelawny of Trelawne; or the Prophecy: a Legend of 

Cornwall, 228 
Trollope, Anthony, 234, 239 
Trollope, Frances, 231, 232, 234-242, 243, 269 

Udolpho, The Mysteries of, see Mysteries of Udolpho, 

The 
Uncle Tom's Cabin, 15, 238, 293 
Undine, 254 

Valperga: or the Life and Adventures of Castruccio, 

Prince of Lucca, 207-210 
Vanity Fair, 164, 288 
Venetia, 200 
Verne, Jules, 6 
Vicar of Wakefield, The, 46, 79, 296 



Index 309 

Vicar of Wrexhill, The, 240 

Village Politics: Addressed to all Mechanics, Journey- 
men, and Labourers in Great Britain. By Will Chip, 
a Country Carpenter, 64-65 

Villette, 270-273 

Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 74, 149, 204 

Vivian, 119, 122 

Vivian Grey, 200, 216, 217, 219 

Voltaire, Francois, 73 

Wallace, 143 

Walpole, Horace, 88, 89 

Wanderer, The, or Female Difficulties, 59, 60 

Ward, A. W., 288 

Ward, Mrs. Humphry, 267 

Warleigh, or the Fatal Oak; a Legend of Devon, 227 

Waste Not, Want Not, 125 

Waverley, 45, 60, 137, 144, 155, 178 

Waverley Novels, 102, 117, 145, 216 

Welsh, Charles, 67, 127 

Werner, or the Inheritance, 109 

Westminster Review, 221, 224 

White, Gilbert, 191 

White Hoods, The, 226 

Whole Duty of Man, 64 

Widow Barnaby, 239 

Widow Married, The, 239 

Widow Wedded, The, or the Barnaby s in America, 239 

Wild Irish Girl, The, 129 

Will Chip, a Country Carpenter, see Village Politics 

Winchelsea, Lady, 79 

Window in Thrums, The, 137 

Windsor Forest, 79 

Wives and Daughters, 287-288, 292, 293 

Wollstonecraft, Mary, 73, 74, 149, 150, 204, 205, 210 

Wood, Mrs. Henry, 293 

Wordsworth, William, 79, 93, 127, 165, 241 

Wuthering Heights, 249, 256, 258, 261, 265, 267, 271 

Wycherley, William, 13 

Yere-Batan-Serai, 234 
Yonge, Charlotte Mary, 294 



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